
JM 



\ 



THOUGHTS 



ON 



THE LORD'S PRAYER 



BY THE 

REV. FRANCIS WASHBURN 



. ^T 







>o^ 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 AND 3 Bible House 

1883 



Copyright, 1883, 
By Francis Washburn. 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 



i6i I. 

&t i^attf)eh3. vi : 9. 

/p\UR Father which 
art in heaven, 
Hallowed be thy 
name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be 
done on earth as it 
is in heaven. Give 
us this day our daily 
bread. And forgive 
us our debts, as we 
forgive our debtors. 
And lead us not into 
temptation, but de- 
liver us from evil : 
For thine is the 
kingdom and the 
power and the glory, 
for ever.—Afuen. 






(|\UR Father who 
art in heaven, 
Hallowed be thy 
name. Thy king- 
dom come. Thy will 
be done in earth, as 
it is in heaven. 
Give us this day our 
daily bread. And 
forgive us our tres- 
passes, as we for- 
give those who tres- 
pass against us. And 
lead us not into 
temptation, but de- 
liver us from evil. 
Amen. 



I88I. 



^t.i3iratt{]rti3,vi:9. 

/|jUR Father which 
art in heaven, 
Hallowed be thy 
name. Thy king- 
dom come. Thy 
will be done, as in 
heaven, so on earth. 
Give us this day our 
daily bread. And 
forgive us our debts, 
as we also have for- 
given our debtors. 
And bring us not 
into temptation, but 
deliver us from the 
evil one. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. PAGE 

*'Lord Teach Us to Pray" i 

CHAPTER n. 
*' Our Father Who Art in Heaven" 20 

CHAPTER HI. 
' Hallowed be Thy Name" 50 

CHAPTER IV. 
" Thy Kingdom Come" 74 

CHAPTER V. 
*'Thy Will be Done" loi 

CHAPTER VI. 
'* Give Us this Day our Daily Bread " 126 

CHAPTER VII. 
''And Forgive Us our Trespasses" 143 

CHAPTER VIII. 
*'And Lead Us not into Temptation, but Deliver 

Us from Evil " 163 



THE LORD'S PRAYER, 




CHAPTER I. 

''LORD TEACH US TO PRAY." 

CALL your attention, dear reader, 
in a series of meditations, to the 
subject of prayer ; based chiefly 
on the different portions of that 
famihar prayer beginning with the words 
''Our Father who art in heaven." 

A few words then, as to prayer in general, 
preHminary to any presentations of these 
thoughts on this particular prayer, entitled 
by way of distinction the Lord's prayer. 

So important a factor is prayer in the 
economy of salvation by Jesus Christ that 
we cannot pass it by with a superficial treat- 



2 THE LORD'S PRA YER. 

ment : for upon it do our immortal interests 
depend. 

Believe me when I say that some things 
are more important than others ; and that 
none in the whole range of human action is 
so important as this of prayer. For not one 
moment are we safe while riding the billows 
of the treacherous sea called mortal life. 
Not one of us can place any confidence in 
the present as a prophet of the future. To- 
day is no prophet of to-morrow. I need not 
prove so self-evident a remark. Every ex- 
perience shows it. Even the toddling child 
through falls innumerable ascertains to a 
certainty that nothing is certain : that even 
in the objects which to its inexperienced eye 
seem steady and strong there is a possible 
trip or tumble. 

From first to second childhood experience 
teaches that from the adamajat of earth to 
the insubstantial stuff of which Ave make 
our arguments and upon which we base our 
intellectual life, all are vanity, all vexation of 
spirit ; all likely to be swept away the in- 
stant we put upon them the stress of a soul 
whose clay tenement is dissolving. 



''LORD TEACH US TO PRAYr 3 

Not one who lives contemplates a conti- 
nuity of stay in the midst of such possibili- 
ties of chaos. 

Yet many who are thoroughly convinced of 
the transient character of every earthly con- 
dition do not put up petitions to Him whose 
throne is immovable, whose grasp of all ele- 
ments of light and life is a grasp of iron pur- 
pose, to whom there can come no contin- 
gency which by Him cannot be met and 
adapted to the one plan of his. 

Prayer — true prayer — is not the outward 
manifestation of superstitious spirit, yet I 
grant that all of those who pray directly to God 
and not to Mary or any of the holy saints, are 
ignorant of the heights and depths of God's 
character, ignorant of the limits of his nature 
and cannot tell just how much he may do of 
himself and how much by his agents. Yet 
such ignorance need not make them, does 
not make them, superstitious. They are 
reverent in the presence of mystery. A 
mystery which none of the leading scien- 
tists can dissolve. Who before the stupen- 
dous and awful peaks which rise before fools 
to awe them, are just as ignorant as fools. 



4 THE LORD'S PRA YER, 

Doubtless all men are superstitious. But 
that does not make prayer to God a super- 
stitious act. Whatever the motive may be 
that leads one to pray the nature of the 
Being to whom he prays is not changed by 
the character of that wrong motive. 

In a merely human person of great and 
commanding genius there is that which 
strikes feebler miinds with awe. Is that a 
superstitious state? Back of a Richelieu 
was that power of Rome, which in himself 
was the genius to know how and when to 
use it so as to save himself and strike terror 
into the hearts of men. 

It was not alone the fear of that public 
sentiment which turned the one accursed 
into an outcast, and shiit every human heart 
and every human habitation against a man^ 
that left him to perish as a being fit only for 
association with the blackest and the foulest, 
it was not alone the sharp penalties of 
punishment which Rome could inflict but 
also the fear of that God whose servant 
that priest was that made that curse Om- 
nipotent and stayed even the power of a 
king on his throne. 



''LORD TEACH US TO PRAY.'' 5 

To me many things met with every day 
are mysterious and awe-inspiring. They are 
common to your experience as well, and you, 
too, guard against their misuse. 

The perilous nature of the commonest 
things is well known to all, and he who can 
rush forth to meet the perils of a day with- 
out a prayer on his lips and a tremor at his 
heart has lost all true sense of responsibility. 

The lowest or earliest form of prayer is 
the babe's cry : the highest that which we 
now consider. 

The whine of a hungry dog — is it not a 
prayer? 

All nature prays for all nature ; seeks sup- 
ply: in summer the ground and vegetation 
for rain ; in winter for warmth. 

And man is no exception. His desires 
and aspirations exude through his lips the 
sweet moisture of prayer. 

But to whom, to what, does he pray. For 
pray he does. And so, though we grant 
prayer to be a sign of weakness, still it is a 
fact that all men pray. That nation, that 
tribe, that man, is yet to be found who does 
not strive to get the assistance of some 



6 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

power outside of self to aid him in his own 
advancement. Man may be proved, easily 
proved, to be weak. Weakness need not, 
however, qualify our appreciation of him. 
We do not lower him in rank to that depth 
of pure animalism where the strictly scien- 
tific school range him, when we .allow that 
through prayer he can seek and find in God 
his author the filial relation of a son. That 
we have this conception of man's relation to 
his Creator gives us a superiority of mind 
over those thinkers who grant man only a 
mechanical relation to God ; not that of kin- 
ship and spiritual affinity. 

Man needs to pray because he beyond 
every other creature is self-dependent ; be- 
cause he thinks. The other creatures of 
God act and live in an involuntary way. He 
does very few things without willing to do 
them. Because man thinks he beholds the 
limits of his powers and the magnitude of 
life's requirements. The men who pray are 
the men who think most of their own rela- 
tion to these demands. Not that thinking 
of itself leads men to prayer. In the face 
of many illustrious examples to the con- 



" ''LORD TEACH US TO PRAY,'' 7 

trary we would not make so bald a state- 
ment. 

It depends greatly on the subjects which 
occupy a man's thoughts — on the fascina- 
tion of a science, an art, a philsophy. Ar- 
tists, scientists, lawyers, merchants, may be 
praying men, but if under the full influence 
of a profession their minds are apt to be- 
come occupied with these, their affections set 
071 these. 

The man, however, who sinks his man- 
hood in his art, in his science, in his trade, 
becomes to all intents and purposes a ma- 
chine, he ceases to be a man. 

Above every pursuit every man should 
stand and give some thoughts to his own 
personal responsibility, and he w^ho thus 
thinks will pray. His history wall most cer- 
tainly resemble that of others who have pre- 
ceded him. If an artist, suddenly his fingers 
will lose their cunning. If a lawyer, sud- 
denly his voice will fail, or his power of cor- 
relating facts and drawing inferences weaken. 
No matter how high his power of thinking 
on other subjects of a material nature may 
carry him the time will come, unless as is 



8 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

rarely the case, death takes him when he is 
at the zenith of his fame — the time will come 
when he realizes that he is no longer what he 
was once. That his genius or talents were 
but gifts, not of nature, but of God. 

At what time must man begin to pray? 
The Christian is commanded to pray at all 
times. 

But we are not to argue from this in favor 
of any system which denies the inherent 
capacity of men for much of the work of 
life. Prayer is not simply a petition for help, 
it is largely a method of praise and thanks- 
giving. 

We are not able to do any good thing 
without the special help of God — good in a 
spiritual sense, but we may do many good 
things by and through God's creative gift in 
nature and by nature without any special 
bestowment. There is in the order of nature 
a limit put upon the necessity of direct prayer 
to Gt>d for help. To ask God to help you to 
eat and drink when he has already given you 
the capacity to eat and drink is as wicked as 
it is absurd. The devout but intelligent 
man will not pray less than the zealous but 



''LORD TEACH US TO PRAVr 9 

ignorant man, but he certainly will not pray 
God for special grace to do that which God 
in nature has given him the ability to do. 

Education we may therefore say limits the 
number of objects for which one will pray; 
it also limits the number of words. Long 
prayers won little favor from Christ. Much 
speaking or wordy petitions, we judge from 
his strictures, advance not one's interest 
with the Trinity. 

Many things are gained without direct 
prayer as many things may be gained by 
prayer, and yet we are so afraid of impulsive 
people and advocates of error that we hesi- 
tate in making a necessary qualification. 
Persons will neglect to pray at all because 
we grant man some natural ability to per- 
form intellectual and physical labor. Per- 
sons will argue against prayer or the need of 
prayer and use the arguments of one who 
holds the affirmative in support of the nega- 
tive. 

But intelligent people are with us, for they 
perceive the extent and use of the natural 
powers and employ the same in the vast ma- 
jority of cases most successfully, while he who 



lO THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

neglects the ideas which his brains generate, 
the energies of his heart and strength of his 
muscle, will but waste time and die a vagrant. 
The heavens of God have for such a person 
a covering of brass impenetrable. 

Ignorance and idleness multiply gods and 
prayers and rot in penury while they pray. 
That prayer is no substitute for work you 
know, but it will do no harm to reaffirm it. 
It is true too that work is no substitute for 
prayer, and if exclusively followed will turn 
the soft finger-point that touches the keys 
into melody into a horn so hard that no 
sensation may be felt by it. No prayer in 
the heart and nothing but work for the hand, 
and you might touch all keys and weight 
the air with melody but not a throb of 
tenderness would be created : the spiritual 
sense of sympathy and sentiment would be 
lost although the work of the mind has, 
through the labor of the hand of man given 
us marvelous productions. These have come 
to us since the nightmare of death with 
its purgatorial flames were by the Reforma- 
tion and the discovery of printing and a new 
world, drifted a little away. Men have 



''LORD TEACH US TO PRAVr II 

ceased to spend all their time propitiating 
the heavenly powers and have put their 
thoughts on mundane affairs, and what has 
been the practical result of less penance 
and prayer and more w^ork. They have 
made this earth what the ancients under the 
serfdom of a religious monopoly did not con- 
ceive even heaven to be — in beauty, in maj- 
esty, in sublimity. 

In thus speaking the truth and giving men 
and honorable labor that recognition to 
which they are entitled, let no one say that 
I disparage God's throne-room. No, that 
is yet inconceivably superior to any possible 
analogies found on earth, but how think you 
would a John the beloved have described it 
to-day with such an earth so full of industry 
yoked to ingenuity. 

The monks who dedicated their lives to 
prayer may have been very good men in 
their day, but a voyage of one modern 
steamship to China or Japan laden with mis- 
sionaries and Bibles and the product of earn- 
est and honest labor, does more for God and 
humanity than all the prayers of all the 
monks. And this we say without any dis- 



12 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

respect to all that is good in the Christianity 
cherished in the Roman Communion. 

No, two things, prayer and work, yoked to- 
gether pull the Church of God up the steep 
sides of Mt. Zion. Service, a complete service 
includes both. Money earned by work un- 
sanctified by prayer will be to any Christian 
body employing it a source of moral weak- 
ness, because our God is holy, just, and 
good, and because too the wages of sin is 
death. The earnings of unconsecrated toil 
injure rather than benefit the cause of the 
Holy One. 

We stop to say a word here suggested by 
the words just uttered. It appears to be 
the impression that the ark of God cannot 
go forward, that it will totter to its fall if 
unsanctified means are not employed to . 
steady it. If it be the ark of God it needs 
no such help. A man who serves Mammon 
exclusively cannot aid a holy work by the 
surplus earnings of such service. He must 
enter God's temple. He, himself in person, 
must bring to God's altar the first fruits of 
his efforts in life. Such will sustain God's 
work. 



''LORD TEACH US TO FRAY:' 1 3 

Prayer to be efficacious should be directed 
to the proper being and for a particular ob- 
ject with such qualification as we shall sug- 
gest as we proceed with these thoughts. 

It should be directed to God in the name 
of his Son. This is the Gospel method. 

Many prayers that are uttered are uttered 
for objects that a pure and just being cannot 
answer. 

Suppose as an illustration of this a man 
should pray that stocks might decline sud- 
denly, so as to enable him to purchase a 
large quantity to sell again in a rising 
market. His prayer Avould be most unjust 
and ungenerous. If God should answer 
such a prayer, he would lend his divine 
power to advance the interests of robbery. 

And so with many of the prayers uttered 
for business success. They involve two 
evils, the stimulation of selfishness and rob- 
bery either direct or indirect. 

That God will not answer any prayer for 
the attainment of any purpose the issue 
or effect of which attainment is unjust, w^e 
may safely affirm. 

The abuse of prayer demands a word. 



14 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

One may employ this system of communica- 
tion improperly. He may use it to curse 
his enemies, he may employ it to gain credit 
in society, he may think only of his ability 
to coin phrases, while ostensibly presentiug 
petitions to God. 

He may ask God's assistance in business, 
and yet from the time the shutters are taken 
down until they are put up again, he may 
think only of profit and per cent. Or, he 
may assume under the stimulus of a desire 
to be winsome a tone of intrusive familiarity 
with God. We have heard prayers from the 
lips of persons who seemed far away in the 
sacred presence of the Holy One, and yet 
who noted every flutter — every shade of 
color in the dress of those who stood awe- 
struck around them. Oh, this abominable 
selfishness that tinctures everything that we 
do. We cannot do anything with a self-for- 
getful spirit. This evil of conceit vitiates 
everything that we do. Not prayer alone, 
but even our hospitalities are free only while 
our guests amuse. And yet we do recollect 
incidents that give us a nobler idea of men 
than the above would imply. Great emer- 



''LORD TEACH US TO FRAY.'' 1 5 

gencies frequently bring the noble qualities 
of our natures to the surface. In order to 
prevent abuse in some particulars a form of 
prayer is necessary. The Jewish Church 
had such. A form which voiced forth the 
proper objects to be prayed for in the proper 
language. If one were to present a petition 
to a king, he would have it drawn after a 
certain form, and then presented to the king 
according to the prescribed etiquette of the 
court. 

But you will say Christ has opened up a 
new and living way. He follows no cdiirt 
etiquette. One may gain access to God at 
any moment. 

Yes, I say, but there are conditions, there 
are certain forms prescribed, even here. 

No method of approach is so elaborate as 
that presented by the latest evangelical 
schools of religious teachers. They make a 
very broad distinction between the prayer 
of the righteous and the prayer of the pub- 
lican. Whose prayer, if you remember, was 
but the repeated iteration of seven words, 
'' Lord be merciful to me a sinner.'* 

One would not be permitted to pray in 



1 6 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

the public meetings of these who have no 
liturgy, if in his prayers he confounded the 
especial functions and offices of the Trinity, 
or works with faith, or, if he confused con- 
viction with regeneration, conversion with 
sanctification. They all have a rigid forni, 
it is not in the mere explosives of the air, 
but it is in the doctrines back of these sylla- 
bles. 

Wordsas the vehicles of thought are essen- 
tial. And the right words are necessary to 
the presentation of the right thoughts. God 
in giving his revelation to men gave them also 
the language of approach to Himself; we 
have the prayers of the Jewish ritual service, 
the prayers of Christ, the prayers of the 
Church of Christ, adopted from the Hebrew 
liturgy. 

These prayers have been prepared so as 
to give expression to the teaching of the 
Bible respecting God's nature, and the rela- 
tion in which man the sinner stands to Him 
in the light of Christ's life, death and resur- 
rection. 

But we pause to consider the particular 
prayer given by our blessed Lord. Not 



" ''LORD TEACH US TO FRAY,'' 1/ 

fragment by fragment, although it will bear 
such minute inspection, let me assure you, 
and furnish ample field for the display of 
most profound thought. 

The request of the disciples of our blessed 
Lord was an opportune one, for the new 
church needed some form of prayer to suit 
its peculiar features, a prayer which would 
do no violence to the creed then extant and 
prevailing, and which would yet fit the lips 
of one who had embraced the religion of the 
Christ. 

Our Saviour's reply did not countenance 
the system of free and independent praying, 
nor did it discountenance it directly. He 
did not say '' Thou dost not need any par- 
ticular form of prayer, for each one under 
the new form of the faith is to make his own 
prayers, but he did say '^ After this manner 
therefore pray ye." He thus gave them the 
prayer: "Our father who art in heaven, 
hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come — 
thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." 

He also gave them advice as to the proper 
place for personal prayer. 

"• And when thou prayest, thou shalt not 



1 8 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

be as the hypocrites are, for they love to 
pray standing in the synagogues and on the 
corners of the streets that they may be seen 
of men. But thou when thou prayest enter 
into thy closet." 

A vital essential of all prayer is faith. This 
language which I am about to quote was 
used by Christ to Peter — the morning after 
Christ had ridden into Jerusalem : ^^ What 
things soever ye desire when ye pray, be- 
lieve that ye receive them and ye shall have 
them." Another rendering of which is: ^* I 
say to you, all things whatever, praying, you 
desire, believe that you receive, and it shall 
be to you." Hereafter I shall show with 
what qualification. 

In conclusion let me say : That the in- 
vasion of the new faith, introduced a new 
outward form of approach to God. That 
which should render the method of the Tem- 
ple superfluous. 

The mediator was not the prophet — the 
priest or the sacrifice ; but the prophet, the 
priest and the sacrifice united in one, ^^who 
by his one oblation of Himself once offered 
has made a full, perfect and sufficient sacri- 



* ''LORD TEACH US TO PRAVr IQ 

fice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of 
the whole world. 

He, too, a risen and redeeming Lord. A 
living mediator, ever keeping fresh and flow- 
ing that blood of the crucifix, which other- 
wise would have clotted and decayed. 

A God-man to interpret God to men. A 
man in heaven as man's interpreter to God 
and the holy angels. 

He living now gives us through this other- 
wise dead history a revelation of God's 
tenderness, sweetness, righteousness. 

^e makes his kinship know^n, so that 
through him we see the heart of God. He 
makes it possible for us to feel the presence 
of heavenly balm. We need bring no fruit, 
save the fruit of faith ; no flower, save the 
open petals of our affection; no firstlings 
of the flock, save those lambs saved from 
the desolating and tearing wolves of sin, and 
with the prayer '' Father who art in heaven," 
on our lips be hallowed with the peace and 
presence of God. 



20 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 




CHAPTER 11. 

OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVEN.'* 

SO such tender and intimate use of 
the term Our Father had ever been 
employed in times anterior to 
Jesus Christ ; although the term 
father as indicative of a phase of God*s 
character had been employed to express his 
relation to the Israelites. 

A phase which is, however, in no sense 
lacking in tenderness. Nathan, when he 
went to David with the message from God, 
forbidding him because of his deeds of war 
to erect him a Temple, thus conveys God's 
promises concerning his Son and successor: 
'' And when thy days be fulfilled, I will set 
up thy seed, and I will establish him. He 
shall build an house for my name ... I will 
be his father and he shall be my Son." (2 
Sam., 7th Ch.) 
And then, too, later on we read the words 



''OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEA VENr 21 

of King David himself in the 68th Psalm, 
where he describes God as *' a father of the 
fatherless." 

And in a still more pathetic and tender 
strain, he alludes to God's mercy saying that 
he is ^'plenteous in mercy," that ^Mike as a 
father pitieth his children, so the Lord 
pitieth them that fear him," remembering 
that we are but dust swept away by the 
winds and forgotten. 

But David is not solitary as a prophet in 
this conception of God's relation to the 
children of Israel, for Isaiah and Jeremiah 
with others present this idea paramountly. 
Isaiah in that magnificent burst of his, ex- 
claiming, ^^For unto us a child is born, unto 
us a Son is given, and the government shall 
be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be 
called Wonderful Councilor. The mighty 
God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of 
Peace." And you will note that he says 
this of the Messias." 

But no such weight of meaning could be 
attached to the word prior to the revelation 
of God through Jesus, our Master, our 
Helper. 



22 THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

No ; the idea of relationship to each in- 
dividual was not presented to the Hebrew 
people with that force of meaning given to 
it in these words, "• Our Father who art in 
heaven/* 

The religion of Jesus Christ from the first 
has been a religion of personal experience. 
Such the Hebrew faith never was, so far as 
we can ascertain, by and through the writ- 
ings which have come to us, dealing with 
the affairs of great political leaders, and very- 
prominent persons and events chiefly. We 
do not find that that faith emphasized the 
individual life in its teaching ; it had no way 
of touching the hearts of its adherents into 
a quick pulsing of divine life. 

It made much of ritual. Through the lips 
of its adherents Jerusalem was the constantly 
repeated expression of fealty and devotion. 

The eye of every faithful one in worship 
must be turned toward the proud city, from 
whence the smoke of the burning sacrifices 
so constantly ascended. The feet of the 
faithful at the time of the great feasts must 
thither tend. God was to them in Jerusalem. 
Not everywhere, where the child is, but in 



''OUR FA THER WHO ART IN HEA VENr 23 

one place only to be reached and touched 
by man. If far away from that place the 
devout Jew would turn his face toward 
Jerusalem, as some good Christians now 
turn their faces to the altar, as if virtue at- 
tached to such peculiar attitude. As the 
Christians of a later period turned to the 
Babylon of later times, Rome. Rome was 
on their lips. Let one see Rome and die, 
was the desire of their ardent souls. This 
very idea that some peculiar sanctity per- 
tained thereto, was the impelling motive 
that induced the monk Luther to wend his 
way thither, happily to discover that un- 
blushing profligacy and open vice rioted 
. under the indulgencies of the Papal throne, 
and to experience like Saul on his way to 
Damascus an illumination of mind which re- 
vealed the face of a Saviour, who could save 
and that to the uttermost, simply by faith 
through grace. The religion of Jesus Christ, 
our elder brother in the family of God, is a 
state or condition of the soul ; hence, we do 
not judge of the potency of Christianity by 
its public assemblies. We judge it by the 
best individual life. If any one man profess- 



24 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

ing it manifests before men the very highest 
gifts and graces denominated moral, we say 
the religion is a success. 

As we judge of the success of a machine, 
not by the number of samples of its work, but 
by the perfection of that work as shown in 
one — arguing that if it can produce one good 
and perfect article, it can produce others. 

At Jerusalem the ancient Jews assembled 
to celebrate the great feasts of their faith : 
The Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles, the 
New Moons, and on the Great Day of 
Atonement. Between them and the one 
whom they would propitiate stood theAaronic 
order^ of priests, the smallest and most in- 
significant of whom was mightier to the 
minds of the faithful than any earthly 
ruler. 

But Jesus came. He who was to banish 
the customs and commands of that service 
and ritual, strike away the barriers which 
prevented the people from receiving the in- 
timate communions — personal communions 
with God — He who in Himself was to be 
priest and sacrifice and Temple. He who 
was to bring the members of the family — 



''OUR FA THRR WHO ART IN HEA VEN:' 2$ 

separated by wide chasms of feeling, and 
thought into a reconciled relation of amity, 
yea, a nearer relation, that of parent and off- 
spring. 

To the child of God to-day, therefore, the 
ancient system is but an object of curiosity, 
valuable as all antiquities on the shelves of 
the world are to show the modern world its 
advance over the despotisms of crude revela- 
tions; opinions and systems built on infer- 
ences from half truths in process of growth 
and development. 

But that ancient Hebrew faith was not al- 
together valueless to the past. While it 
existed it was valuable for it held much 
truth. To be sure it was developed on its 
practical side into a burdensome ceremonial. 
The law was run into infinite division and 
subdivision, there were subtleties of inter- 
pretation indulged in, and yet the law, 
moral and ceremonial, held many a rare and 
beautiful gem of truth. 

We have not as Christians been so very 
dissimilar to the builders of cities and states. 
All of us have built on the debris of the 
past. We have built over the sepulchres of 



26 THE LORD'S PRA YER. 

our fathers. We could not build altogether 
in the air. 

Where does modern Paris stand ? on the 
ruins of the Paris of Charlemagne. Where 
does Rome stand ? on the ruins of the Rome 
of the Caesars. Where does Jerusalem 
stand ? on the site of that city through 
whose gate one dark and dismal night a com- 
pany of men walked out from their last ban- 
quet of friendship and love. How much of 
our modern law have we borrowed from the 
banks of the Nile, Jordan and Tiber. And 
so accuse not our religion as being built of 
the broken particles of system that fell into 
time as the ages marched past. No ; we can- 
not build a religion out of things belonging 
exclusively to this period. That is the best 
material which has stood the tests of time 
and its tempests. 

We do not use Abraham and Moses, and 
David and Solomon, and Job and Isaiah as 
saviours, but we do find food for the mind 
and soul in the memoirs of them, in their 
wise sayings and prophetic utterances. Yet, 
not one of these who stood before the ages 
in pre-Christian times is comparable to Him 



''OUR FA THER WHO ART IN HEA VENy 2/ 

who stands our glory and our boast, coming 
to us out of the heart of God — He who by 
and through him has unbosomed Himself to 
the world — if the world will but wash its 
eyes in the healing waters which ever flow 
a river of life ; that world may behold the 
secret which the great parable of each man's 
life otherwise obscurely holds. 

The Temple rebuilt at the return from 
the Persian bondage had its High Priest and 
its Holy of Holies, its ark with its guardian 
angels, but never one sign of the presence of 
the Shechinah, no fiery flashes on the breast- 
plate of the High Priest betokened the 
nearness of Jehovah. The sins of both priests 
and people had polluted even the secret and 
sacred place. So that while every minute 
prescription of the ritual was therein per- 
formed, yet not a whisper of angel of the 
Lord ; not a gleam of arch-angelic sword 
flashed ; not a flutter of the wings of the 
Holy One descending was heard amid the 
silences of that darkened chamber, whose 
only light was the gleam of the lamp which 
hung before the ark. 

The old system, without any touch of 



28 THE LORD'S PR A YER, 

tenderness about it, only appealed to the 
passionate and sensuous in men's natures. 

It still continued when Jesus wrestled in 
his agony with a midnight terror, to fill the 
troughs of its Great Altar with the blood of 
beasts, ready upon the morrow to put to 
death Him who had taught his disciples to 
lisp the words, '^ Our father," even to a 
throned God. 

We know enough of this heartless, soulless 
church, when we know that it handed Jesus 
the gentle to the war-clad, and ermine-robed 
Romans for mock trial and coronation and 
crucifixion, so that in all after ages the 
odium of that awful libel of justice, that 
criminal comedy, and that atrocious slaying 
could be thrown on us who are the descend- 
ants of those Gentiles. 

Pardon me for using terms which are, 
it may be, extravagant. Remember that 
I am speaking of Jesus Christ. Truly I 
could "not speak of any human being in 
such terms without insulting your sense 
of propriety. I am speaking of one who 
among all men of history stands as the Co- 
lossus of Rhodes stood above all statues. 



''OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEA VEN:' 29 

Besides whom all Alexanders and Platos are 
the merest pigmies. 

Him we worship, Him we follow — in no 
narrow and exclusive spirit. He stands in- 
terpreted to us, not merely by words, not 
merely by incidents, but by His whole being 
in the flesh, by His whole life, from the time 
of the primitive settlements in Asia Minor, 
through all the subsequent years, even to the 
last syllable of uttered worship. Him we 
take as God's exponent. The trailing of 
his garments we follow through the jun- 
gles of creeds, the morasses of doubts, the 
swamps of errors, the valley of the death- 
angel, knowing that it sweeps at last the 
glassy floor of God's presence-chamber, where 
a father's smile sits regnant on the Judge's 
face. 

No prophet, no priest, no king, no states- 
man, no warrior, yea, no man, no angel, 
stands so peerless and supreme as He stands 
to-day. A veteran, see his scars ; a hero, read 
the record of His victories; a king, see the 
clouds. His chariots, move Him to His royal 
seat. Look up if you w^ould see Him as 
He is. Look back if you would see Him as 



30 THE LORD'S PRA VER. 

a peasant of Nazareth peerless in the pres- 
ence of prince and pharisee and priest. 

He rode the billows of obloquy which 
rolled up to whelm him ; he stemmed the 
torrent of lies with the simplicity of truth. 
Obedient even unto death to Him who had 
commissioned and sent him forth. 

Ever as a Son reverencing the father ; re- 
ceiving from that father recognition in those 
words : ^' This is my beloved Son : hear 
Him." Sending this proclamation forth. 
All men are akin, all children of a Father 
who is in heaven. Not a father merely 
human either, but a Father who is in heaven, 
and because in heaven everywhere. 

While we are taught to regard the Hebrew 
faith as of little service to us who are now 
under the reign and residence of the Holy. 
Ghost, we are not taught to neglect the 
study of the Hebrew scriptures. They 
furnish us help because they give us that 
with which we may contrast this present. 
We can only determine values through re- 
lations. By the law of contrast we approx- 
imately ascertain the beauty and value of 
that which we possess. 



''OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEA VENr 31 

How, for illustration, do we know the true 
value of all this age has given us? Chiefly 
by means literary. We have books of his- 
tory. Through history we ascertain the 
causes which have led to the material pro- 
gress everywhere so evident. 

We know the life of this elder brother 
through manuscripts found in monasteries ; 
in the work of copying which the monks 
who have been in this real benefactors to the 
race; manuscripts which vary from each 
other in many but very slight particulars. 

These have been translated by different 
men of acknowledged superiority and world- 
wide fame, which, as thus translated, vary as 
to outward verbal expression, but not in the 
general tenor of the message conveyed, nor 
in the interior spiritual sense. For instance, 
take the two different renderings of our 
Lord's prayer: ist. That of the standard 
Bible as given in the 6th Ch. of St. Mat- 
thew's gospel: ^' Our father which art in 
heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy king- 
dom come, thy will be done on earth as it is 
in heaven. Give us this day our daily 
bread ; and forgive us our debts as we for- 



32 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

give our debtors. And lead us not into 
temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine 
is the kingdom and the power and the glory- 
forever." 

Compare this with that of a new version, 
a version which is the result of years of labor 
by many of the most talented linguists of 
this era. Let me quote: ^' Our Father, 
thou in the heavens, revered be thy name. 
Let thy kingdom come, thy will be done 
upon earth even as in heaven. Give us this 
day our necessary food, and forgive us our 
debts as we have forgiven our debtors, and 
abandon us not to trial, but preserve us from, 
evil." To be sure the doxology is left off, 
because it is omitted by most of the 
** Fathers," and in some- of the early MSS. 

It has been heretofore retained, because 
it furnished a fitting conclusion to a prayer 
which otherwise ends most abruptly, and 
because, too, the doxology was in ancient use 
among the Jews. 

Indeed, the whole of this prayer is a col- 
lect or running together of selected sen- 
tences from the Hebrew Liturgy. 

But the slightest acquaintance with the 



''OUR FA THER WHO ART IN HEA VENr 33 

difficulties attending translation will furnish 
a sufficient excuse for any slight verbal inac- 
curacies or differences in rendering one lan- 
guage into another, and especially a dead into 
a living tongue. We cannot put the stress 
of a spirit's need upon single words in our 
English Bible. Does this, therefore, render 
it useless for us as a help to the kingdom of 
God. The book of itself being no help to 
such state, unless it be illuminated by the 
Holy Spirit, then is it quick and powerful, 
sharper than any two edged sword — a dis- 
cerner of the thoughts and intents of the 
heart. 

In both of the renderings we have a view 
of the Fatherhood of God presented. 

Again another thought pertinent to the 
phase of this subject just given. He who 
has studied the phenomena of the human 
mind thoughtfully will never expect tech- 
nical accuracy. For from the very first 
crude perceptions to the most perfect vision 
of which the mind is capable, that mind 
must depend on three different agents. 

1st. The brain, which may or may not be 
keenly sensitive. 



34 THE LORD'S PRA YER, 

2d. The perfect or imperfect condition 
of the sense of sight or hearing. 

3d. The atmospheric condition through 
which the objective realm is thrown by 
either of these senses into the realm of 
thought. 

All truth can only be apprehended in a 
shadowy and adumbrated form. 

The revelation from whatever source pro- 
ceeding can be only received according to 
the capacity of the one receiving it. Locke 
has very clearly presented the force of this 
thought, u e,, 

If you will take any one word i-n common 
use and ask your most learned friends to 
define it, they will all vary it sufficiently 
to convey different shadings, it may be of 
the same thought. Therefore, it is absurd . 
to aecept or reject any one rendering, or 
translation of scripture. A large and liberal 
method, such as that of Luther in his trans- 
lation, is to be given of the Holy Scriptures. 

I say it now, and may say it again, that it 
is with the Bible, as it is with every other 
thing defective, where it is human. And it 
is human in its letters, its words, its word 



*'OUR FA THER WHO ART IN HEA VEN^ 3$ 

arrangements, and yet notwithstanding all 
this, it is the word of God furnishing us with 
a fully rounded conception of God and his 
plan of redemption for a fallen race — only 
to be truly grasped by those who are quick- 
ened by the Holy Ghost. And those who 
come to it without this will be, like Matthew 
Arnold has been, bewildered by the drift 
which the Gulf Stream of Truth sweeps along. 
And now with a broad and comprehensive 
conception of the plan of God revealed in 
these scriptures, let us take up the twin 
thoughts, the Fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man. 

This idea of the brotherhood of man, 
which is derived from the idea of the 
Fatherhood of God, is truly sublime. 

As one grasps the idea of the relation of 
man to God as that of sons, so he grasps the 
grand and beautiful idea of man's relation to 
man as that of a brother. 

As we thus behold this splendid vision of 
the family of God, do we not escape from 
the leaden influence of low-lying neighbor- 
hoods full of gnarled and stunted specimens. 
Remember that this is not that brotherhood 



36 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

of man, which is recognized by the red 
Republicans of France, by the Nihilists of 
Russia — this is a brotherhood, with Jesus 
Christ at its head, of all those who can use 
this prayer '' Our father who art in heaven." 

Adrnitted into the family of God, we are 
joined to this Being by the tenderest of ties. 

We can and do judge him by the tone 
and language of his Son. 

Recall that scene and that prayer in the 
upper chamber ; do you remember these few 
words selected from that prayer ; '' O right- 
eous Father the world hath not known thee, 
but / have known theeT Note the quiet tone 
of assured confidence, ^* but I have known 
thee," '' and I have declared unto them thy 
name, that the love wherewith thou hast 
loved me, may be in them, and I in them." 
Heaven was marvellously near to earth, 
when he could add '^ the glory which thou 
gavest me I have given them that they may 
be one even as we are one, I in them and 
thou in me." 

I have little opinion of that system of 
natural religion which isolates God, which 
divorces him from his children, and con- 



''VUR FA THER WHO ART IN HE A VEN." 3/ 

ceives him sitting solitary in the heights 
with no warm atmosphere of home about 
him. This system is repugnant to the 
whole tenor of his revelation in Christ. 

God rules no doubt. His will is sovereign 
and the worlds obey. He rules in Christ, 
who is wonderful to us, who have seen so 
few of his wonders after all. He is Counsel- 
lor to us who cannot succeed without his 
advice. The mighty God — yet he is also 
the Everlasting Father and Prince of our 
peace. 

He makes the hearts of men his habita- 
tion, when they will to open the door to his 
solicitation. He comes to the chamber, 
where the virgin soul sits deeply thinking, to 
announce the birth of love and divine pater- 
nity, and becomes thereafter a personal fact 
and experience to it. 

Out of the dull dun soil the grass, the 
flowers spring, for under that soil are the 
germs of future waving harvests. So in the 
souls of many who are frozen by the winds, 
the biting winds of this inhospitable world, 
may the warm atmosphere of this thought 
of Fatherhood, and the sympathy which it 



38 THE LORD'S PRA YER, 

creates between men, bring into leaf and 
blossom and fruit every excellent virtue. 
There is responsibility, too, attaching to this 
brotherly relation which we must assume. 
Murderers may disclaim the demands of 
brotherhood, and say with Cain, "■ Am I my 
brother^s keeper?" 

Yes, he was his brother's keeper — brute, 
that jealousy and hate had made him — and 
up to the heavens rose the blood of his vic- 
tim, stirring a father's heart with its de- 
mands for justice. 

The influence of a merely negative posi- 
tion, is baneful. You may simply stand 
still, when the battle is raging, and be to the 
vanquished an enemy of the meanest sort in 
the practice of your neutrality. Lives, im- 
perilled lives, are at issue, while you say 
nothing — while you do nothing. Oh, there 
are so many unworthy brothers, who will 
see their fellows perish. 

All that is required of them is this acting 
for themselves. If they would but come 
forward and take the vows to our Christ. 
This would inspire others with confidence. 
We are, indeed, keepers of our brothers' 



''aUR FATHER WHO ART IN HE A VEN:' 39 

souls. Cease, then, to lightly esteem the 
trust. 

I have spoken of the Fatherhood of God, 
for which we have the human father as a 
type, but there is, too, something more than 
fatherhood suggested by the idea of a di- 
vine paternity. There is the idea of mother- 
hood. 

So that we may safely affirm that, what- 
ever the idea of a human fatherhood may 
suggest, the relation of God is that and 
more. 

Whatever the idea of human motherhood 
may suggest, God is that and more. 

The ideas suggested by the analogy of 
God as father are of sustentation, care, cul- 
ture, control ; those which are feminine quali- 
ties and which belong to human mother- 
hood are gentleness, grace, goodness, love. 

God may be conceived of upon this hy- 
pothesis as a father providing for our wants, 
controling our destinies, giving us culture 
and instructing our minds ; as a mother, long- 
suffering, ready to forgive — gentle and tender 
and true. Who, sitting in the heavens, gath- 
ers the reins in hand to control and di- 



40 THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

rect all forces for the conservation and re- 
demption of his children. 

But the analogy of an earthly fatherhood 
fails to completely fit the heavenly father. 
Although the former has, under the influ- 
ence of Christianity, come to mean more 
than it ever meant under Paganism or even 
under the revelation of God through Moses 
or the later prophets. We cannot commend 
altogether the methods of fathers with their 
families. But few, indeed, who hold that 
honorable relation can give us any adequate 
illustration of God's fatherhood. 

Neither can we commend the earthly 
mother, nor say that she is a fair illustration 
of God's care for his children. 

Our Savior used the hen's solicitude for 
her brood as an illustration of God's love. 
How oft, said he, would I have gathered 
thee as a hen gathereth her chicks 'neath 
her wing — speaking of Jerusalem. 

How sacred the name of Father. 

Shall we hallow it ? Shall we keep a place 
for it in our hearts ? As we weave the whole 
cloth of life ? A life we are weaving with 
the material picked from all the world 



''OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HE A VEN^ 4^ 

about us. We are all designers and weavers. 
God is the one to whom we shall take the 
motley-colored product at the last. He will 
reject it at the last, believe me, if our lives 
are not dyed in the fast colors of Christ's 
righteousness. God is interested in us just 
as much so as he was in Jerusalem when he 
sent forth that wail of one robbed of his 
children over the doomed city, lying like a 
magnificent picture just before him. 

Interested ! Yes, but the word has not 
enough significance. Would you say of a 
mother, she is interested in her child. No, 
you would employ a stronger word to ex- 
press the feelings of a mother or a father. 

Can a mother forget her child ? Oftener 
rather do mothers forget themselves, lose 
themselves in their children. 

Before the birth of their first-born, the 
knit pair lived in each other. The world 
murmured and fretted, but they heard not, 
nor cared to hear its murmur or its fret. 
They were the still waters of the inlet on 
the borders of the turbulent lake. The pres- 
ent was theirs, they cared neither for the 
past nor the future. 



42 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

Yet when God spoke to them and placed 
his image in their arms they merged their 
love for each other in this. 

God interested in us? He is more than 
interested. For us he lives. Why, for us 
he trod the wine-press alone. Without us 
the silences about him will remain unbroken. 
Neither chant nor cry will disturb the still- 
ness of space. 

Do we who are sons and daughters of 
earthly parents strive to make our lives ful- 
fill the prophetic hopes of fathers, of mothers ; 
that father who lifted us into his arms, that 
mother who buried us in her heart. Who 
stooped daily to trace in us the resem- 
blances of themselves? 

Then, think of this, and answer it as you 
may. 

Does not God so look at you through the 
golden haze which hovers round the Impe- 
rial City with these words upon his lips. 
Will he grow like us? 

Shall we grow like Father ; shall simplicity 
and innocence develop into righteousness ; 
shall we grow like Father? Shall he ever 
be able to see in us miniature resemblances 
of Himself? 



''OUJi FA THER WHO ART IN HEA VEN^ 43 

The work of the Church of God is to sur- 
round us with every soft and suasive power, 
to gently lead those with young to God, so 
that they shall learn how to treat the young, 
to take the young and lift them to the 
knowledge of Him ; to the care of Him who 
loved childhood most intensely. 

The Church is the nursery of God. And 
we who attend come not to gain earthly 
wisdom. We come not to study the deriva- 
tion of words, nor to work out ingenious de- 
signs from sacred patterns. We are hungry 
when we come to God's house. We would 
be fed with heavenly manna. We are thirs- 
ty when we come. *^ Father give us that 
which shall quench our thirst," is our prayer. 
We want help. 

What child thinks of father or mother in 
connection with school-books, hard lessons ? 
Home is not a school or academy. Home 
is a branch of the Church. A place for af- 
fection, a moral centre. 

Come to the Church then to find the com- 
forts of home. What is the prevailing tone 
of our ordinary homes ; does it give the chil- 
dren a love for the place where God delights 
to dwell ? 



44 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

Fathers, mothers, are you the gods which 
your children worship? Beware of usurping 
the place of Our Father who is in heaven in 
the affections of your children. 

Beware of that idolatry of home here, 
which shall shut the doors of that home be- 
yond the cloud and mystery of death. 

Many of us, however, have lost the past 
beyond recall. Fathers, mothers, have slept 
for long years. 

The monuments we placed at the heads 
of their graves are so mouldered that the 
stranger can scarcely decipher the one word 
by which we remember them after death, 
^* Father," ^' Mother.'^ 

Words which speak whole volumes. An 
orator need not utter many such to stir the 
hearts of men to nobleness of life — they are 
so eloquent. 

In closing this chapter let me say that the 
Lord*s prayer is not my prayer alone, it is 
not your prayer, it is a prayer for each of us. 

With such a prayer rising to the throne of 
God from our hearts we may trust the fu- 
ture, nor distress ourselves with forebodings. 
For us these words may express our hope. 



''OUR FA THER WHO ART IN HEA VEN^ 45 

" He Teadeth me. O blessed thought, 
O words with heavenly comfort fraught. 
What e'er I do, where e'er I be, 
'Tis his own hand that leadeth me." 

Alas ! the very familiarity of the Lord's 
prayer dulls us to its deep significance. 

Three thoughts are suggested by the 
theme. 

FATHERHOOD. 

BROTHERHOOD. 

HOME. 

A fatherhood which includes both parents 
as we possess them here, and yet we speak 
frequently of the Church the Bride of Christ 
as our mother. If we thus speak, behold, 
we have, like Christ, a heavenly father and 
an earthly mother. There was no necessity 
arising compelling the Church to give em- 
phasis to the blessed Virgin. Truly, the 
Holy Father has all those qualities of heart 
which endear the Virgin Mary to many. 
There is no sanction for the exaltation of 
her into the inner circle of grace. But the 
temptation to deify the merely human has 
ever been the tendency of sentimentalists 
and idealists whose conceptions of the heav- 



46 THE LORD'S PRA YER. 

ens of God are similar to their conceptions 
of a piece of tapestry. Heaven with them 
is a sort of art gallery, whose walls are hung 
with rare paintings of saintly persons and 
allegories representing improbable and whol- 
ly impossible events. No ; the Fatherhood 
of God must stand also for the motherhood 
of man. 

With such conditions of relationship pre- 
vailing why is it that the world has so few of 
the attractions of home. It is attractive to 
a degree, but too largely in those things 
which gratify selfish appetites. And, indeed, 
many who are charmed with the idea of a 
universal brotherhood, resent neighborly acts 
on the part of others, and think overtures of 
brotherly love rather intrusive than other- 
wise. 

We do not seem similarly constituted in 
this matter of society. And this is especial- 
ly true with the most refined and scholarly. 
They shrink from the obtrusive impertinence 
of the curious. These little isolated family 
groups are dear, indeed, to many of us* 

To give up our small homes to go into 
the general family of heaven, is a thought 



''OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVENr 47 

which is to many of us painful. To be 
equally acquainted and equally love every 
one of millions is, when thus presented bald- 
ly, actually repugnant. 

To most of us the attractiveness of the 
heavenly home is the idea of loving reunion 
with dear friends or relatives who have gone 
before ; as the attractiveness of earth is real- 
ly owing to the grouped isolation of most of 
us into families. And while we are anxious 
for the recognition of the thought that all 
men are children of the same heavenly 
father we want to retain the practices of our 
present civilization. But the home beyond 
the swellings of the Jordan will be all that 
you shall desire, who are faithful unto death, 
when you shall awake in Our Father's like- 
ness. 

Let us cherish in our minds the thought 
that whatever charm there is in our earthly 
homes, shall be intensified in that one which 
is heavenly. 

Have you a stationary home, where for 
years you have lived and loved ? Alas ! 
there are some who have not thus been 
privileged. They look forward to heaven's 



48 THE LORD'S PR A YER, 

permanency of home charm as you certainly 
cannot look. I see and hear much of the con- 
duct of those to whom wealth and a contin- 
uation of favoring circumstances have given 
power over others. I have comforted those 
who by such have been displaced from posi- 
tions of holy trust and dispossessed of a fami- 
ly home. And for such I have as a man only 
loathing and scorn, as a priest of God only 
the curse. If they shall by any change of 
fortune realize the fickle character of that 
wealth which they now so profanely abuse 
may God grant them pardon and peace. 

It is a crime against humanity which men 
of fortune scarcely realize to turn the head 
of a family away, impulsively or imperiously, 
without any cause which is just, and thus 
break up for wife and child the sacred spot of 
home. Are such crimes committed here in 
this Christian land? Yes, indeed ! By men 
of the world ? By members of that family 
whose one Father is a pattern of tenderness 
and might, love and protection. 

Light then your lamps in your comfort- 
able homes, warm yourselves at the flames 
golden that glisten from your grates, but if 



''OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEA VENr 49 

you have driven away children and parents 
into the darkness and the chill, God shall 
recompense you as you deserve. 

And you who have no comforts in your 
homes, and dream of luxuries, God your 
father shall give you a mansion in the skies 
that shall surpass the palaces of which you 
dream if now you confide in and pray to 
Him. 




50 THE LORD'S PRA YER. 

CHAPTER III. 

'^ HALLOWED BE THY NAME/' 

j|LAS ! we have as an age lost that 
sense of reverence which all ages 
prior to the last three hundred 
years held for things sacred. I 
put this century in the society of the two 
preceding. I mean these three centuries as 
passed, as made by the nations of Western 
Europe. We cannot include this nation un- 
til the last thirty years in the charge of par- 
ticipating in that spirit of irreverence dis- 
tinguishing England, Germany, and France. 
And for this reason, that Puritanism and 
Romanism here combined to hold it in check. 
Puritanism more especially gave the relig- 
ious tone to this country for the larger part 
of two centuries. 

Two hundred years ago in England, before 
Wesley began his evangelical work there, 
Deism was in the ascendancy. It was not 
only the accepted creed of men of letters, 



• ''HALLOWED BE THY NAME:' 5 1 

but it had invaded the sacred Priesthood of 
the Church of God, but America was Trini- 
tarian throughout except that a few Quakers, 
proscribed and persecuted, had a precarious 
foothold here. 

Over one hundred years ago Voltaire's 
writings, most popular, most pernicious, were 
just issuing from the press of France. He 
was living the most idolized and influential 
of the learned men of France. The effect 
of these baneful products of his brain was 
the destruction of all reverence for the past 
in letters, in religion, in the minds of men. 
The elimination by his influence, of all rev- 
erence for the church and for God culmina- 
ted in the French revolution. 

The association of that which is always 
divine with so much that was evil in the 
Christian Church during the years of its un- 
disputed supremacy, gave the opponents of 
the Truth a mighty leverage when the great 
Luther swept the accumulated corruptions 
away as if they were but cobwebs. 

Everywhere the revolt became popular. 

Christianity was made chargeable with all 
these corruptions of ecclesiasticism by athe- 



52 THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

ists and infidels, with Avhom reverence and 
superstition were synonymous terms. 

But thanks be to God that the English 
and German reformers distinguished so ac- 
curately between the wheat of God's word 
and the tares which the devil had sown in the 
fields of God during the twelve hundred years 
of the husbandmen's stupor. 

Reverence and superstition are still allied 
by those who would render some excuse for 
their neglect of self-control, obedience to the 
moral law and allegiance to God. 

The age is not singular in its tone, of 
which we judge simply through current 
literature when compared with the last two 
centuries in England, France, and Germany. 
It is singular as observed in this country 
as compared with all the years from the 
country's settlement until the last half 
century. 

Of course our judgment of all periods is 
necessarily of a very superficial character. 
Even take the dark ages when, as a Gibbon 
would say, the night of superstition had set- 
tled on the world, we may doubt that ignor- 
ance, sensuality, and bigotry, were so abso- 



* ''HALLOWED BE THY NAME:' 53 

lutely prevailing. Then, too, when the 
reformation came, we may judge that many, 
very many, advanced reverently seeking 
God's help, searching the scriptures careful- 
ly and prayerfully before removing a symbol 
or cutting off a doctrine or changing a cus- 
tom. This was the character of the reforma- 
tory movement as we know within the pale 
of our own Church. 

Before we dwell more especially on hallow- 
ing the name of Father, I wish to speak of 
reverence for God and his revelation through 
the scriptures and through the Christian 
Church. 

I cannot give an unreserved acceptance to 
a revelation simply because a council of 
bishops declares it a revelation, or because 
a pious grandmother died accepting it. I 
belong to this age, but I am not necessarily 
excluded from examining all that is pre- 
sented to me, simply because the age bears 
the general reputation of superficiality, im- 
pulsiveness, and irreverence. You and I are 
not very dissimilar. We are seekers after 
truth, — that must be truth for us. 

We are to search, scrutinize, accept or re- 



54 THE LORD'S PRA YER, 

ject, and stand or fall as individuals by our 
exercise of judgment. 

God, we cannot think, desires to associate 
with minds who have walked blind-folded 
into his presence. 

The whole history of his government 
shows that he has submitted himself and 
the revelations of himself to the just and 
free inquiry of hulnble men of heart. 

It is not irreverent to search for truth. 
Indeed, to accept without investigation is to 
misuse the faculties — God-given — is to put 
oneself in a position where he may be led 
into that worst form of irreverence : idolatry. 
We are to be as wise as serpents and harm- 
less as doves. For Satan, in the guise of 
God, is abroad in the earth. 

An honest sceptic is the superior as a man 
of thought and intelligence to the one who 
ignorantly worships a false conception of the 
deity, although the latter may have more 
hope of being saved. Still, investigation into 
the nature of the unseen world may be pur- 
sued too far, and it may be prosecuted with 
a spirit of irreverence. Carefulness in hand- 
ling subjects relative to the moral and spir- 



• ''HALLOWED BE THY NAME.'' 55 

itual realm should be used. We should be 
as careful as the chemist in his laboratory is : 
he being so afraid of combinations which are 
explosives. 

In searching into the character of God 
more especially one should constantly have 
the fear of God before him. 

The ancient Hebrews were reverent. No 
such system of scrutiny into the various at- 
tributes of the Almighty was permitted. 
The word Jehovah never passed the lips of 
the devout. But how different the conduct 
of the early Greek Church in this particular. 
They ventured in where angels feared to 
tread and gave a direction to Christian 
thought which every true believer must re- 
gret. 

The controversies in the Church began as 
soon as Christianity was presented to the 
Greek mind. 

The religion of Christ was forced into the 
region of argument. No so with the He- 
brew faith. In no writings do we find argu- 
ments or apologies for that faith. God 
everywhere is a moral governor. One ever 
present as an administrator. The Jews, to 



S6 THE LORD'S PRA YER, 

be sure, did not desire the propagation of 
their faith, and therefore, had no missiona- 
ries or special pleaders employed. This is 
the reason why we have no elaborate treat- 
ises now extant. But, on the contrary, 
Christianity could only grow by propaga- 
tion. And so the disciples were commis- 
sioned to go, and did go everywhere pro- 
claiming that which was to the Jews a 
stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolish- 
ness. Met at the very threshold of their 
work with the grim laughter of those gods 
of thought, the Greeks ; they bent every 
faculty toward the establishment of rea- 
sonable and persuasive arguments in its be- 
half. 

To us to-day they seem perhaps to have 
intruded too far into the inner sanctuary of 
God's nature and attributes, although we 
must laud the noble motive that impelled 
them. 

And so because the Gospel of Christ was 
of necessity preached, first, to the Greeks, 
after it had been proclaimed to the Jews, 
have we in theology so many subtle argu- 
ments concerning questions which, happily 



* ''HALLOWED BE THY NAME:' 57 

for the Israelites, never disturbed them. 
They quibbled about the law, but they ac- 
cepted the personal government of God 
through the Temple without elaborating any 
system of thought concerning the nature of 
Jehovah. He to them was the great '' I 
am " enveloped in cloud and mystery. 

But accuse not the early Christian writers 
and preachers of irreverently touching upon 
questions with which they had little or noth 
ing to do. 

They, in presenting the plain gospel, were 
confronted with scepticism which in its pa- 
gan form altogether denied that the Son of 
God had lived, had died, had risen, had as- 
cended, or which, in the form of heresy, 
blended in a confused way the great truths 
of the gospel with systems of thought thor- 
oughly antagonistic thereto. 

St. Paul did not concern himself about 
these questions as did St. John, who in his 
gospel more particularly tried to show the 
true relation of Christ to the Father. Paul 
had little taste for speculative subtleties and 
no patience for any minute matters what- 
ever. His was a large and generous soul, a 
broad and practical mind. 



58 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

After the death of the Apostles it became 
necessary, owing to a divergence in teach- 
ing and the introduction of Oriental philoso- 
phies, through Simon Magus and Cerinthus 
and a number of others to define the rela- 
tion of the three persons, the Father, the 
Son and the Holy Ghost. 

The details of the Arian controversy are 
full and may not be presented in this con- 
nection. Suffice it to say that the Council 
of Nice defined and decreed that which was 
the truth concerning the eternal Godhead. 

All true Christian believers have accepted 
this as final. They have hallowed that con- 
ception of God. It is for us to exercise rev- 
erence in treating this subject of the Trinity. 

We are to hallow the name of the Father, 
but allying it with the Son by giving it the 
union which it possesses. 

There are many things in which we must 
believe, yet they never can be explained to 
us. To say that we will not accept or use 
them is to deprive ourselves of light and 
warmth. 

In this prayer from which w^e draw our 
reflections we say to him whom we desig- 



- ''HALLOWED BE THY NAME.'' 59 

nate as Father, '' Hallowed be thy name," 
hallowed be the name of father. And right- 
fully so, for it is a name full of hallowed as- 
sociations, a name to be honored and revered 
everywhere. But is it a name thus honored, 
thus revered everywhere ? 

Is that name honored in a community 
where marriage is not a holy sacrament ? 
Where the people look upon it as a legal 
compact simply, to be binding only so long 
as both man and woman are agreed, to be 
annulled so soon as they agree to separate? 
What significance is there in the word father 
or in the word mother to the children of 
such a pair? Man's relation to woman as 
there given is close and intimate, so close, so 
intimate that those whom God has joined to- 
gether no man, no body of men can separate. 

God, through marriage, imparts his life and 
image to the race. A holy method of crea- 
tion thus has been devised. And those who 
enter upon this union solemnly in the sight 
of God undoubtedly hallow the name of 
our heavenly Father. 

The name of father is not hallowed in that 
country where polygamy is permitted. 



6o THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

Under the constitution and laws of this 
great nation the practice of a plurality of 
wives prevails, and yet to a very inconsidera- 
ble extent, the Mormons numbering but 
100,000, and occupying a very limited area 
of our territory. Still the Church of Christ 
must condemn the system, however small, as 
a desecration of that holy relation of the 
father of the household. 

God through all the ages has smiled upon 
this mating of one man to one woman. And 
we say this, too, in the face of scriptural ex- 
amples. 

David and other kings of Israel stepped 
aside from the practice of monogamy, but 
with what result. 

^ '' We need only look. to the household of 
David to be convinced that the evils which 
befel his family were the consequences of 
polygamy." 

'^ However, under the gospel, the sanctity 
and inviolability of marriage have been re- 
enacted, and the Lord Jesus has given to it 
a loftier holiness and richer significance by 

* David, King of Israel. By W. M. Taylor, D.D. 



• ''HALLOWED BE THY NAME.'' 6l 

using it as a symbolical illustration of his 
own relation to the Church which he hath 
purchased with his own blood." 

Again the Christian Church is aroused to 
the great peril which overhangs the Ameri- 
can family from the commercial idea of mar- 
riage too largely prevalent. Those who en- 
ter upon it from any low motive shall surely 
in themselves reap the results of an unhappy 
and ill-assorted mating. 

But putting all this on one side let me ad- 
dress myself to the heads of families. Fath- 
ers, you are, by the way you govern your 
households, to give them a high symbol of^ 
the Fatherhood of God. Are you, let me 
ask, first of all, a man of God. 

Do you believe in Him? 

Do you worship Him ? 

Do you serve Him? 

Or are you standing as the natural head 
of a family without the slightest conception 
of the meaning of the children about you. 
Children that are to cover you with pall, 
bear you to the silence and concealment of 
the grave, and themselves without your aid 
move into the future with its tears and tri- 



62 THE LORD'S PRA YER. 

umphs. You are sure of yourselves un- 
doubtedly. Fear for you has never un- 
strung a nerve, never has caused you to 
hesitate in putting your feet in any untried 
place. Yes, your conduct says to others, we, 
with earth's solid facts around us, have no 
faith in the phantoms of Christianity ! But 
granted all this, it maybe that where you are 
so strong your children are weak, and need 
these *^ phantom " guides which you reject. 

Can you not give them, because you love 
them, some conception of the Fatherhood 
of God ? Remember that you may not for- 
ever be a father to them. You know not 
the needs which life's changes may bring to 
them, requiring some heavenly hope that an 
eye, whose gaze they may not return, guides 
them. Men, in the name of all the ages yet 
to come, the generations yet to spring from 
the loins of these to whom you under God 
have given life ; by the remembrance of that 
trust received from your parents by them 
from antecedent generations running back 
into the gray dawn of Being — give your 
families some atmosphere of godliness. If 
you care not to insure your own lives against 



• ''HALLOWED BE THY NAME.'' 63 

risks for your own lives' sakes, insure them 
so that your example may be the copy for 
your children, the parents and grandparents 
of the generations yet to be. 

How do you hallow the name of Father, 
who manifests simply a mechanical interest 
in the family? Show your children that you 
love their souls as well as their bodies. 
Doubtless you send them to school. Doubt- 
less you give them the Catechism of a Church. 
You let them eat at the same table with you. 
You clothe them. You rarely scold them. 
Occasionally you amuse them, but how do 
you furnish them with illustrations of what 
men do. That boy looking at you connects 
Church and Catechism with his childhood. 
And says w^hen I am a man like my pa, I'll 
put away these childish things. It is dis- 
gusting to observe thg habits of some men 
of family whose contemplations, backed by 
personal conceit, have put the crudest con- 
ceptions in the way of themselves and their 
children. Others again who cannot eluci- 
date the simplest problem in interest, and 
yet trust themselves to the ability of other 
minds, will in the affairs of the soul make 



64 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

their inability to solve a mystery an excuse 
for their neglect of the worship of Almighty 
God and seventh day observances. 

To stand thus between the past and the 
future as a rotten link in the chain of living 
sequences is something most awful when 
fully realized. 

The earthly father should be not only a 
believer in the fatherhood of God, but he 
should make the name most holy in the 
sight of men. 

But we need not concentrate all our ad- 
vice on those in the providence of God 
granted that holy privilege of fatherhood. 
We may very properly suggest to those who 
are related to this which symbolizes one 
phase of God's character, that the teaching of 
all history is that the father is the head of 
the family. It is the law of God recorded 
in the scriptures, it is the law of the land: 
We do not care to see it as a law arbitrarily 
enforced. We delight to behold the equality 
of love, and yet we also delight to see a 
recognition on the part of the mother and 
her children of the sacred and solemn rela- 
tion of the father. The children should be 



• ''HALLOWED BE THY NAME.'' 65 

impressed by both parents with the require- 
ments in the way of respect and obedience. 
A mother, a father should be careful how 
they hold each other up to blame before 
their children. 

They should never make the children in- 
terested parties in their differences, nor ap- 
peal to them for favor or support. 
. A wise child will refrain from taking sides 
in any difficulty arising between father and 
mother. 

Then, too, the home should be so sacred 
that a member of it, father, mother, child, 
will put the seal of silence on his or her lips. 

Alas ! for some, such are their homes that 
they had better give their thoughts expres- 
sion to the four winds than within hearing of 
the members of their own households. 

Children, do you hallow the name of 
father. And while you love mother connect 
the idea of fatherhood with all that is sacred. 
Let none know the weaknesses of either 
parent, but let all with whom you come in 
contact see that you will defend their good 
name, even wMth your life's blood. 

And now let us think of Our Heavenly 



66 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

Father\s methods of dealing with us. He 
pities us, for in many respects we are rather 
to be pitied than blamed. Consider the 
small amount of training toward this end of 
human fatherhood we have received. And 
yet we would make ourselves superior to 
mere pity, we would win God's approbation. 
We would aim at the highest excellence in 
all that we do. We would be worthy of the. 
immortal interests committed to us. 

Fathers — mothers, what are we doing. 
Has the sign of God's love been placed on 
the heads of those who gathered about us, 
watch every look, every word, every act, 
with a constancy we cannot escape. To 
hear the children's reproaches added to our 
own in that awful place of remorse ! And 
surely they will be heard if we are neglect- 
ful now. 

Again, there is quite another way of hal- 
lowing God's name. 

That is by the avoidance of profanity. 

I do not just now speak of ordinary swear- 
ing. Any use of the name of God in a light 
and hasty way is profanity. The ^'so help 
me God" as repeated in our courts of law, 



. ''HALLOWED BE THY NAME:' 6y 

grates harshly upon the mind of one who 
connects that name with the subhme mys- 
teries of life. To tell the truth and nothing 
but the truth under the spell of such a use 
of God's name or to rank as a perjurer is an 
insult to any man's commonest sense of de- 
cency. God will judge no man thus swear- 
ing with any more severity of judgment than 
for his ordinary violation of the command : 
Thou shalt not lie. Better, far better would 
it be to ask a man to affirm. 

So I say ; but I am not peculiar in holding 
this view, as I shall show. The whole sub- 
sequent treatment of a witness after the ad- 
ministration of an oath of this kind by those 
who under the permission of the court cross- 
examine witnesses is to incite him to violate 
the solemn engagement made in so hasty 
and irreverent a form. ^' Archdeacon Paley 
in his Moral and PoHtical Philosophy said 
that in no country are the words of an oath 
worse contrived to convey its meaning or 
impress its obligations than in England ; the 
accusation applies with equal justice to most 
of our States where the same form prevails. 
The concluding words of the oath upon 



68 THE LORD'S PRA YER. 

which all the other words are understood to 
depend are '' So help me God/' and their 
meaning as defined by the principal writers 
upon the subject is that the swearer thereby 
invokes the vengeance of the Almighty and 
renounces his pardon if what he swears to 
be not strictly true. ''The tendency of such 
an oath," says the writer, ''as usually ad- 
ministered, must be, if no worse, to confuse 
the mind of the person taking it as to its 
true meaning, to impair the reverence which 
is due to the sacred name of Deity, and 
thereby to defeat the very object for which 
an oath is designed/'"^ 

Again, the secular use of a religious cere- 
mony containing the name of God is a pro- 
fanation. We do not wish to condemn 
simply for the sake of condemnation. We 
do believe that God's name is profaned by 
over frequent use or when put in association 
with ceremonies otherwise purely secular. 

One who represents in his office the Trini- 
ty in Unity cannot but condemn the use of 



* Article '* Judicial Oaths," Century Magazine, March, 

1883. 



. ''HALLOWED BE THY NAME:' 69 

the name of God according to the Deist's 
conception of Him. 

When we hear one say *' God the Divine 
Architect does everything on the square/* 
the language to us seems verging on the 
profane. 

Any terms which have become slang terms 
when applied to the Triune Deity are irrev- 
erent. 

The Salvation Army, the methods of re- 
vivalists, such as that of one Barnes, must 
and are condemned by the Church of Christ 
as coarse and profane. 

We do not condemn men because they are 
ignorant, but because they are profane. The 
tendency to reduce the ^religion of '* Our 
Heavenly Father" to the level of the lowest 
language is a profane tendency. 

Christ's representation of the Father is 
sufficiently simple and needs no elucidation 
through the aid of shop dialect. Think of a 
man talking to the convicts of a prison of 
Christ in the terms used by convicts with 
each other. Or to railroad men in the terms 
used by railroad men. And yet well-inten- 



70 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

tioned persons will thus talk of the holy 
One, whose name is to be hallowed. 

Well may we pray that God^s name may 
be hallowed. 

That name which an impenitent sinner 
cannot utter without profaning it. How 
guilty are many of us of this very wicked- 
ness. Who amongst us is innocent of 
this great transgression. For who has not 
passed that holy name through lips which 
have parted, it may be, to let forth lies, 
words of hate ; lips which have been sullied 
with the moisture of breathings breaking 
upon the air in syllables which convey the 
unseemly jest. Do we not profane God*s 
name when we sp^ak it through so impure a 
channel? 

If only those can truly hallow that name 
who are loving and dutiful children where 
do some of us stand who have never truly 
repented us of our faults and been received 
into the family of God. 

Let me now speak briefly upon a very 
common method of profaning God's name : 
that of swearing. And who that has walked 
the streets or sat at open windows has not 



> ''HALLOWED BE THY NAME:' /I 

heard language the most wicked and pro- 
fane. Not only from the lips of young men 
but from the lips of children. Not used in 
imprecation either, but as if it were their 
natural tongue. Sad commentary, indeed, 
upon the influence of our Sunday schools. 
We may not require policemen to prevent 
crime, but we do need as a people to have a 
nobler idea of our own language inculcated, 
which does not need the importation into 
it of profanity. 

Even men professing to represent the 
Church of Christ will swear most awfully. 

I need not specify anymore particular rea- 
sons why we should earnestly pray that God's 
holy name may be hallowed. As a great 
nation we should hallow the name of Him 
who backs all righteous law. No just and 
equitable law but could be backed as the 
ancient laws of the Hebrew people were 
backed and issued as if they directly emana- 
ted from him. We should not make minute 
laws that enter too intrusively into private 
and individual life. We should not destroy 
moral responsibility by any compulsory 
methods. We should recognize in legisla- 



72 THE LORD'S PRA YER, 

tion, however, the general principles of God's 
government. We should foster and encour- 
age his worship and sacred learning. The 
people should be thoroughly imbued with 
sentiments of reverence for everything that 
represents God. We do not think that this 
would prevent their just discrimination in 
their use of the elective franchise, but on the 
contrary they would make conscience their 
guide. 

We need to hallow the name and the 
thought of God by treating with more rever- 
ence everything which illustrates God, as 
Sovereign, as Creator, and Father. 

As Christians let us pray in faith, believ- 
ing that throughout the whole earth the 
name of Our Heavenly Father will yet be 
hallowed. Are we striving to secure this re- 
sult? We may well ask: are we laboring 
toward this desirable end ? 

To have done something for the family 
will be for us a most pleasant memory when 
every member of that family shall be gath- 
ered at the last into the great household of 
faith. 

Let us use this Lord's prayer^ — a con- 



''HALLOWED BE THY NAME:' 73 

densed liturgy — a prayer consecrated by 
centuries of service, the one prayer in com- 
mon use direct from the lips of Christ, the 
beloved Son, who never sulHed the name the 
Father gave him, who from the beginning of 
his career to the end made no false step ; 
showing us that nothing so hallows the name 
of Father as a true life, a life of pure thought, 
a life of true word, and holy walk. Such a 
life as each of us should strive earnestly to 
live. 



74 THE LORD'S PRA VER. 




CHAPTER IV. 

'' THY KINGDOM COME/' 

threefold kingdom is prayed for : 
1st. A spiritual kingdom. 
2d. An earthly kingdom. 
3d. A heavenly kingdom. 
As to the first or spiritual kingdom, let me 
say that two things are essential to the true 
life of every soul launched out upon the sea 
of human endeavor: Seeing, and entering 
into the kingdom. Let me quote the fami- 
liar words of Christ to Nicodemus. 

*^ Except a man be born again, he cannot 
see the kingdom of God." 
Again : 

'' Except a man be born of water and the 
spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of 
God." 

My readers, we would have you both see 
the kingdom of God and enter into the full 
privileges of it. 



" THY KINGDOM COME." 75 

This kingdom of God which is a state or 
condition of heart. The kingdom of God 
which bears the name of the Church of God 
is a kingdom consisting of those who have 
been born of the spirit. 

That outward kingdom which puts upon 
the Child of God — God's visible symbol of 
purification, the sprinkled water drops, each 
drop a pearl of priceless promise. 

One may have been thus sprinkled with 
the holy water of the font, and yet lose the 
sanctity of soul of which it is a symbol. 

Children are received into the visible 
Church, being deemed innocent of voluntary 
transgression. They are like young Samuel, 
young John the baptist, and the boy Jesus 
consecrated to God. Yet they may stray, 
as they grow older, away from the vows 
which tie them to the font, and lose by 
their acts of voluntary denial their hope of 
salvation. A responsible person must be 
born again of the spirit ; he must take upon 
himself the vows— the promises of parents 
and sponsors, or be lost to the privileges of 
the kingdom. 



7^ THE LORD'S FRA YER, 

We pray that the kingdom of God may 
come to individuals. 

That it may be said of each disciple, the 
kingdom of God is within him. 

What a wickedness is this which goes 
forth into society, and with the seal of God 
given in baptism, it may be after Confirma- 
tion, and riots in sensual indulgences, claim- 
ing to be exempt by virtue of such from all 
perils and penalties. 

Says our Lord : *' When the unclean 
spirit is gone out of a man, he, the unclean 
spirit, walketh through dry places seeking 
rest ; and finding none, he saith I will return 
into my house, whence I came out. And 
when he cometh he findeth it swept and 
garnished.*' 

''Then goeth he, the unclean spirit, and 
taketh to him seven other spirits more 
wicked than himself, and they enter in and 
dwell there ; and the last state of that man 
is worse than the first." And in thus say- 
ing, Jesus recognized that this, his work of 
casting out devils, was not a perpetual bar- 
rier to their re-entrance into the person, pro- 
vided he, the person, neglected measures of 



" THY KINGDOM COME:' 77 

defence. The influences of the appliances 
of the Christian church, when constantly 
used, keep the converted soul in such a 
state of defence that the temptations to 
sin are largely neutralized. 

We, when we pray these words, *'Thy 
kingdom come,** pray that it may come to 
the hearts of those who have not been 
baptized or confirmed ; that it may be re^ 
stored, or, in the language of our prayers, 
*^ renewed" to them. We pray that God's 
kingdom may be fully set up in each 
communicant's heart. That it may come to 
many whom we tenderly love, and that they 
may seek through repentance and faith the 
graces of Confirmation, and that they may 
ever thereafter remain true to Him into 
whose kingdom they have entered. 

But I will not consume any more of my 
time in dwelling upon the first point, but will 
now speak of the subject as it presents itself 
to my mind under the second, i, e., the estab- 
lishment of God's kingdom upon the earth. 

My readers, when I survey the vast popu- 
lations which teem upon the globe, the mul- 
titudes of men which drift this way, invad- 



78 THE LORD'S PRA YER, 

ing our land in an ever-increasing ratio, only- 
prevented by the high seas from inundating 
us with a living flood of the restless and dis- 
contented of Europe and Asia ; hundreds 
of whom worship idols, thousands of whom 
have lost all reverence for God, all habits of 
worship and a holy life, and look with a 
jealous eye upon the inequalities of social 
life, everywhere existing, I am filled with a 
degree of anxiety, but very faintly subdued 
by the thought that our institutions of 
sacred learning and worship may to a 
limited extent secure the assimilation of 
these rationalists, communists and pagans 
with the Christian civilization to which we 
owe our national grandeur. For I know that 
but one thing can relieve men of discontent, 
and that is the religion of Our Blessed Sav- 
iour, so full of promises of reward hereafter. 
An organized society underlies the sur- 
face of all social and political life. A society 
secret, yet with millions of semi-sympathizers, 
whose utterances now and again are heard 
through the secular press. Utterances which 
appeal to the evil which is in every carnal 
heart. Utterances which betray not only 



'* THY KINGDOM COME:' 79 

the desire for equality in the matter of prop- 
erty, but a declared purpose favoring an 
indiscriminate use of the same property by 
all. Without regard to the barriers inter- 
posed by nature, by man in law and govern- 
ment, and by God. A society which is at 
work through its public advocates — male 
and female — largely the latter, so powerful 
in this world in the moral realm. 

One of whom in speaking against the 
Rev. Dr. Dix's strictures on the social here- 
sies, so disastrously advocated by many- 
makes a comparison of our own with the 
vile ages, when practices were permitted as 
a part of religious ceremonies, most infa- 
mous and abominable. 

This person, in reply to Dr. Dix's argu- 
ment, that women owed everything to the 
church, shows the utterly immoral claims 
she is willing to make. I give her words 
only because she shows the spirit of those 
who would destroy society. She said : '^ It 
was astonishing that Dr. Dix should make 
that statement in the face of history. 
Women to-day under the dominion of the 
Church were not as well off ^s they were in, 



80 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

pagan Egypt 4000 years ago. We found in 
the movements of that time men and women 
side by side. Pious women were priestesses, 
and learned women were the instructors of 
youth." God preserve us from such piety 
and such instruction, from which the glow 
of an Ebers' romances cannot lift the stain 
of immorality. But this is enough to show 
the quality of the claims made by the female 
portion of the Communists, so anxious for a 
reformation of the most radical type. 

This is but one phase of this discontent, 
kept down yet by public opinion, which will 
not permit a bold, bad woman or man to 
stand publicly on a par with the virtuous. 
Yet modern opinion favors with modern 
practice the cause of the oppressed, whether 
woman or man. Whatever is pure and good, 
which woman or man can best do — organ- 
ized society will grant, and the Christian 
Church sanction. 

We cannot rid ourselves of the haunting 
presentiment that infidel forces mean evil to 
Christianity, and all those laws made on the 
basis of the Ten Commandments. 

If persons of enlightenment, persons of 



''THY KINGDOM COME." 8 1 

learning, persons of wealth, embrace infidel 
notions, absent themselves from places of 
public worship, ignore the claims of Al- 
mighty God, they will be instrumental 
in guiding the more ignorant ; the mul- 
titude will follow them. And when that 
multitude has drunk of the transform- 
ing sophistries of the French school of 
humanitarians, but little pressure will be 
required to arouse them to rise, and sweep 
away cathedrals, churches, palaces — places 
built for the accumulation of wealth, homes 
of industry, halls of learning. 

Either the kingdom of heaven will be 
miniatured here or the kingdom of Satan. 
Hurl from his sovereign seat the idea of an 
Omnipotent God, just and merciful, who is 
yet to reward the good and punish the 
wicked, and no earthly power can long hold 
in check a people, who perceive nothing to 
offset the poverty, the pain which is theirs. 

You say that you do not believe that the 
idea of God holds the great mass of society 
quiet in the midst of their distress, but it is 
a mere opinion ; you have no example, taken 
from history, to show that any society worthy 



82 THE LORD'S PRA YEA. 

of historic notice has existed the members 
of which were pure secularists. No, on the 
contrary, every government that we know 
has been supported by the gods. The peo- 
ple of every generation have had implicit 
faith in the existence and power of super- 
natural Beings. 

What has capital to give men, born in 
squalor, living in wretchedness ? Men of 
wealth may build them dwellings, where 
they may live rent free. May continually 
give only to hear the cry repeated over and 
over again, give, give, from a pauperized 
population, and at last receive the requital 
that the patricians of Rome received. 

Either the kingdom of God, or the king- 
dom of the devil — which will you have. 

In history w^e have read of wars of con- 
quest, we have read of great wars between 
religious bodies, but these although accom- 
panied by violent deeds have not left society 
in that awful state of chaos which the ex- 
ample of the revolutions show us, where the 
people have given away to the arguments of 
materialists and demagogues. 

The great political leaders of Europe 



" THY KINGDOM COME." 83 

to-day confront the spectre of sudden death. 
For assassination is the method employed 
by those who are combined against all organ- 
ized government, civil, ecclesiastical and 
military, that which they conceive preserves 
property and place in the hands of the 
few. 

The rights of man mean on their lips, the 
right to rob and slay, until the strongest 
brute survives to gloat over the triumphs of 
his murderous skill. 

A method adopted by the weaker in con- 
flict with the superior is that of private and 
secret revenge. 

Look at Ireland as misrepresented by 
these men, who under the ban of the 
Churches ex-communication, are ready to 
dog the steps of every British statesman 
who has attempted to give them freedom 
from oppression and their just rights. Men 
who cannot be pacified, for they are pos- 
sessed with devils. Men whose lives with- 
out the agitations of chaos would be most 
miserable. But of course, such are not true 
Irishmen. They are, however, the pioneers 
of that revolution yet to be, for which secu- 



84 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

larity, infidelity, Atheism, and religious indif- 
ference are slowly, but surely, paving the way. 

The first reformation struck a blow at the 
curruptions and the tyranny of Rome. The 
next will strike a blow at society as at pres- 
ent constituted. 

Let me support my opinion by that of a 
most profound student of events past and 
present, the late Professor Draper : 

'* There is once more an impending crisis ; 
we are drawn to it irresistibly, but what is 
to be the result, what the end, no one can 
foresee.'' 

Then he asks who is to blame ? I answer, 
those are to blame, who, in their books and 
lectures — their magazines and papers, have 
destroyed all reverence for God — for God's 
image, man. He who exhibits the failure 
of men attempting to live right, with particu- 
larity of detail, puts a premium in the public 
mart on a neglect of any attempt after 
honesty amongst men, and holiness toward 
God. For one who scales the peaks of 
Switzerland, many fail. So for one who 
scales Mt. Zion, many fail. Shall none at- 
tempt. 



''THY KINGDOM COME:' 85 

Hardly a magazine published for the last 
twenty years but has given articles against 
the leading and cardinal doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, with that *^ taken for granted " sort 
of style, peculiar to men whose education, 
like the overflowed stream, is wide but shal- 
low. Our secular press has almost com- 
pletely obliterated the sanctity of Holy Day. 

Who is to blame ? We Christians are to 
blame. God has given a precious wine into 
earthen vessels. Representative Christianity 
gives us a curious compound of virtue and 
depravity. It gives the world many kinds 
of Gods — not but that the keen observer 
may see that they all represent the same 
God. We have the Catholic God and the 
Protestant God presented to men in western 
lands, to say nothing of the Mohammedan 
idea of God, and those of peoples further 
east. 

Do you ask with Pilate what is truth ? 
You who represent capital as you idly loll on 
God*s day on your couch of ease. There 
are others asking that question and grind 
their set teeth together as they say : there 
is no God but greed. 



86 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

This for me is truth : Whosoever believes 
in and worships under the Apostles' Creed 
shall have grace given to bear earth's in- 
equalities and tyrannies, and shall be lifted 
by the death-angel into rest and peace at th.e 
last. When I see men, after the Apostles, 
going everywhere proclaiming to our people 
the saving truth, I say, here is the only philo- 
sophy which will neutralize the teachings of 
foreign socialists, scientific atheists. 

Which, because it stands to purity of 
thought and righteousness of life, will stultify 
the effect of those in the Church who are 
latitudinarian in doctrine, lax and immoral 
in practice ; which will, with God's aid, save 
the world from the supremacy of any form 
of superstition which, with mummery and 
incantations, besots the human intellect and 
benumbs the human conscience. 

Two influences have made Germany a 
rationalistic centre, and a hotbed of social 
revolutionary theories. 

The Protestant Church of Europe has 
neglected to preach Jesus Christ and him 
crucified as a living Saviour, and given the 
people massive treatises on theological sub- 



''THY KINGDOM COME:' 8/ 

jects. The state of society and form of 
government has not been sufficiently elastic 
to stretch to the increased demands of an 
age of intelligence and enterprise. 

We perceive in both Europe and America 
the need of some power which shall make 
the people contented. 

The early Christians were made so by the 
religion of Christ. Why can we not attain 
to the same state ? 

The Christianity of primitive times that 
secured this was the present power of the 
Holy Ghost. 

What is modern Protestantism doing 
for men. If I enter one building: It is 
Apostolical succession and the Church that 
are continually presented. If I enter an- 
other it is to discover how little divine truth 
there is in Christianity. Another, to hear 
that there is no necessity whatever for a 
creed or belief. And yet modern Protest- 
antism can only live by giving men some 
soul-sustaining qualities. Something to 
supply to reverent minds the great vacuum 
left, when their faith in symbols, such as 
Holy Water or Consecrated Wafer, is gone. 



88 THE LORD'S PR A YER, 

Religion demands a spirit resident some- 
where, as an active, soul-sustaining quality. 

All Christians believe in mysteries. Some 
believe in the mystery of regeneration 
through repentance and faith. Others the 
mystery that makes signs and symbols, sanc- 
tified by prayer, saving. 

And these agree in the final condition of 
reward after death. Yet how many are 
there who, because they cannot solve, and 
therefore cannot accept a religious mystery, 
and do see and feel the poverty of their con- 
dition, hate both God and men whom for- 
tune favors. 

My brethren, what are we to do to meet 
the demands of the unhappy and discon- 
tented multitudes, who threaten the stabil- 
ity of existing institutions? 

We can pray this prayer: "Our father 
who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, 
thy kingdom come." 

But this praying is not sufficient. We 
must show our earnestness by aiding with 
voice, with pen, with money, the spread, the 
advance of that kingdom. 

A simple parade between home and 



*' THY KINGDOM COME:' 89 

church, every three or four weeks, is not 
going to save either the home or the Church, 
from destruction at the hands of those whose 
hearts have no glow of heavenly warmth, 
but whose passions have been stirred into a 
flame by the chill of their bodies insuffici- 
ently clothed, the hunger and thirst which 
cries through the lips of their children. 

I speak especially to those who represent 
the comforts of life, for with them the ques- 
tion is important. The Christian Church is 
a necessity of our civilization, the only bar 
to the levelling tendency of Communism. A 
Church which you must support or give your 
dearest and best to the dogs of greed and 
lust and hate. 

No half-hearted perfunctory way of sup- 
porting this kingdom of our Heavenly 
Father is going to stand any one of us in 
good stead, when the volcanic fires shake 
the foundations of our homes. 

You have as vivid a realization as I of the 
ruin possibly impending over society. We 
need not become unnecessarily alarmed nor 
wildly agitated — better is it that we should 
realize, as the engineer of an express train 



90 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

realizes the necessity of obedience to the 
laws of security. 

There is much that is true, undoubtedly, 
in what we hear of the spread of the king- 
dom of Antichrist. The power of misrule 
probably holds in reserve elements of over- 
throw, which only the wise, the powerful 
Father of us all can defeat. 

Let us, therefore, more earnestly pray, 
'* Thy kingdom come — thy will be done on 
earth as it is in heaven.'' 

When we consider what our Father, as 
seen through the revelation of Him made 
by Christ is, can we not most sincerely and 
earnestly pray, and work for so happy a con- 
summation. 

All phases of government have ruled men, 
but think you that any one of them will be 
as lenient as His — who ruled his little com- 
pany of twelve men with the wand of love. 
You may see the Father in the Son. How 
human he is. He is as anxious as any to 
wipe away all traces of inequality in human 
circumstance by the gift to the poor, to the 
rich, of a spirit of contentment. 

Who has accomplished so much. Did He 



'* THY KINGDOM COMEr 9I 

whom the poet has veiled in a mystery of 
beauty. Did Buddha, who exclaimed, after 
he had seen, in passing through the streets 
of his native city, for the first time its squalor 
and wretchedness : 

" Oh ! suffering world, 
I see, I feel 
The vastness of the agony of earth, 
The vainness of its joys, the mockery 

Of all its best, the anguish of its worst " — 

who thought to save the earth, choosing to 
tread its paths with patient, stainless feet, 
making its dust his bed, its loneliest wastes 
his dwelling, its meanest things his mates — 
did this being accomplish that which he 
undertook? No ; he in no degree lifted the 
fever-breeding clouds that rested on Asia. 
He whose verses I have just quoted en- 
titles this hero of his verse the Light of Asia, 
borrowing for his adornment not only the 
title, but the very burden and travail of 
spirit, from the Scriptures which reveal the 
Lord Jesus Christ, who is called not the 
Light of Asia, but of the world, and who 
came to qualify men by the implanting with- 
in their hearts of faith, and a fortitude to 
endure all afiflictions of all life's unequal dis- 



92 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

pensations without the whine of poetical 
misanthropy or the curse of envious greed. 

When we pray the words ** Thy kingdom 
come," we pray for the estabHshment of that 
kingdom spoken of by Daniel, the prophet, 
to the king who had seen in his dream **a 
great image whose brightness was excellent, 
and whose form was terrible." 

The head of that image was of fine gold, 
its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and 
its thighs of brass, its legs of iron, its feet 
part of iron and part of clay. 

Said Daniel to the king, '^ Thou sawest 
the image smote upon the feet by a stone, 
which had been cut out without hands, 
breaking it in pieces — so that the clay, the 
iron, the brass, the silver and the gold, like 
the fine dust floated away on the winds and 
were lost, while the stone that smote the 
image grew to the size of a great mountain, 
which seemed to fill the whole earth." 

And now note Daniel's elucidation of the 
dream : ^^ Thou, O king, art a king of kings, 
for the God of heaven hath given thee a 
kingdom, power and strength and glory. 
After thy death shall arise another inferior 



''THY KINGDOM COME.'' 93 

to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, 
which shall bear rule over all the known 
earth. After this shall arise a fourth king- 
dom of iron, and forasmuch as iron brcaketh 
in pieces and subdueth all things — this shall 
so break and subdue. 

The next kingdom is represented by feet 
and toes, part of potter's clay and part of 
iron. In the days of these kings shall the 
God of heaven set up a kingdom which 
shall never be destroyed ; it shall break in 
pieces and consume all other kingdoms, and 
stand forever. 

The dream is certain and the interpreta- 
tion sure. And who dare give Daniel the 
lie. 

Let me briefly give you the historical 
parallels established by a weight of evidence 
absolutely convincing to the close and con- 
scientious student. 

The first kingdom was Babylon, represent- 
ed by the head of fine gold. 

The second kingdom the Medo-Persia 
kingdom, of whom Cyrus and Darius were 
most prominent kings. 

The third kingdom of brass represents the 



94 THE LORD'S PRA YER, 

Macedonian empire under Phillip and Alex- 
ander the Great. 

The fourth kingdom of iron and part iron 
and part clay very forcibly illustrates the 
power of Rome, which broke in pieces every 
other nation of Asia and Africa and Europe. 

Then it became weak, the iron was mixed 
with clay, the barbarians of central and 
western Europe, which by conquest were 
annexed, were a source of weakness rather 
than strength. 

Fifth. The stone which became a great 
mountain filling the whole earth was the 
kingdom for which we pray when we say, 
** Thy kingdom come." A kingdom which 
shall never be destroyed ; a kingdom which 
shall consume all other kingdoms and stand 
forever. 

A stone cut without hands. Christ was 
born of a pure virgin. He it was who 
established his Church in the home of the 
Caesars. His kingdom is to be both uni- 
versal and unending. The stone grew to 
the size of a great mountain. It did not at 
once attain a supremacy of sway ; it has not 
yet. 



*' THY KINGDOM COMEr 95 

The history of the kingdom or Church of 
God shows that what has been attained has 
only been so attained by herculean efforts, 
great tribulation, patient continuance in well 
doing. 

Nor could it be expected that a kingdom 
with no military men, no weapons of carnal 
warfare, could so quickly subdue opposing 
states, institutions and peoples ; that a king- 
dom which depended upon word of mouth 
communication could spring suddenly into 
absolute supremacy of control. 
♦ A kingdom of which one could become a 
member only by a humiliating concession: 
An acknowledgment that he was a sinner. 
Even after he had become convinced of the 
actual facts upon which Christianity rested, 
there yet was an important step to be taken 
/.^., Confession of Sin, to be accompanied 
with contrition and faith before he could be 
baptized. 

Human laws of thought and feeling are 
not sufficient to account for the rapid growth 
of Christianity during the first four centuries 
against so much opposition from Paganism, 
so much in itself that thoughtful minds 



g6 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

could hardly receive. The power of the 
Holy Ghost was with it to a larger degree 
than at any subsequent period until the Re- 
formation. 

When an emperor was converted a 
human method of advancing the Church 
was adopted, which could not have had the 
full sanction of heaven. And so, although 
for a time purity of doctrine continued to 
exist, methods of w^orship were devised 
which bore evident traces of a heathen 
origin. The kingdom of Christ became in 
process of time, as we well know, over- 
crowded with innovations and additions to 
the simplicity which the Holy Apostles had 
practiced and taught. 

The Reformation did not overthrow 
Christianity, but the rather advanced it, 
making it more acceptable to two classes 
not reached by the method of mystery and 
symbol, i.e., the intelligent and the spiritual. 

But all this is of the past. What is the 
condition of the world to-day, and how is 
Christianity meeting the wants of human- 
kind. Is the kingdom for whose advance 
we pray growing or decaying? My view is 
after all optimistic. 



THY KINGDOM COME:' 9/ 

There is unrest. We cannot declare that 
the kingdom of righteousness and peace is 
fully come in the face of our own time's his- 
tory. 

There are too many devils in the world 
yet. They have slain representatives of 
God in government. Lincoln and Alex- 
ander the Czar, and Garfield and Burke— 
and they threaten those who have taken 
their places ; they have for years, with vile 
caricatures of prominent religious repre- 
sentatives, debauched the minds of our 
youth, as the first step to the overthrow of 
the holy influences of virtue and truth ; 
they continue by vile and secret methods to 
scatter a subtle poison through society that 
shadows our souls with images, that through 
life tempt and lure us to deeds of infamy. 
And so w^e cannot give up praying — that the 
kingdom of God will come to us, enabling 
us to successfully resist the power of these 
evil agents of Satan ; that the kingdom may 
come with a mighty sweeping wind to drive 
these haunting devils away from the earth. 
That it will come is the glorious promise of 
Him who on the isle of Patmos communed 



98 THE LORD'S PRA YER. 

with his exiled disciple John. And John saw 
an angel come down from heaven, having 
the key of the bottomless pit, and a great 
chain in his hand, who laid hold on the dra- 
gon, that old serpent, which is the devil and 
Satan, and bound him a thousand years, du- 
ring which period the kingdom had uninter- 
rupted prosperity. 

Some may be inclined to question the 
value of the last quotation, and doubt its ap- 
plicability to anything rational in time — yet 
it has for most of us a significance that cannot 
be slightly weighed. It is part of the litera- 
ture of the kingdom of God, and refers to 
that kingdom. Under the stimulation 
which it gives to our faith, let us continue 
to pray to Him, who is our Father in heaven, 
thy kingdom come. 

Thy kingdom spiritual, in our hearts 
establish that. 

Thy kingdom in the earth when all that 
delightful declaration of the ancient Hebrew 
prophet shall here exist. Not yet has any 
condition, civil, social or religious given men 
the assurance of its arrival. 

Not a government exists that finds its laws 



'' THY KINGDOM COME:' 99 

truly obeyed, its rulers truly honored. Not 
a government whose laws are strictly equi- 
table. Not a condition of society that is 
free from violations in many forms of those 
amenities, civilities and decencies by which 
alone society may be preserved. 

There is not an organized religious body 
that gives us a picture of peace and joy. 
Even between soldiers of the cross, the an- 
tagonisms of hot controversy exist. The 
kingdom of Christ is not to our eyes yet 
fully come. 

And yet speaking comparatively of the 
Church, we may say that she enjoys more 
uninterrupted peace than has been known to 
other ages. The most dangerous element 
threatening is that which threatens not the 
members of the Church directly, but civil 
government and capital. Yet as we have 
seen the Church, the state, the community, 
in its business and social departments, in- 
cluding family life, rest upon veneration for 
God — and that hope of a heaven which will 
give the poor, the suffering, release from such 
poverty and pain as now afHict them. 

Destroy the kingdom of God, as it is, and 



TOO THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

the kingdom of misrule and anarchy will in- 
evitably follow. 

We, who use the Lord's prayer, do we not 
mean when we say **Thy kingdom come," 
to ask ** Our heavenly father** to give us, 
when the blue sky which canopies our earthly 
home fades on the sight, when its bright 
light grows dim, when the gentle voices of 
those we love grow indistinct, residence and 
repose in that heavenly kingdom. 

That future life — I speak of it now to 
those who are in apparent health, in the full 
enjoyment of the present life. You may 
not — some of you may not, appreciate these 
references to the life beyond death, but I am 
compelled to refer to it. I have not yet 
grown so accustomed to sights of death and 
scenes of woe, as to lose the idea of immor- 
tality. We may — we must, appreciate the 
thought of that future Hfe sufficiently to 
anticipate it in laying up treasures in 
heaven. 

May God grant his blessing to these 
words for his Son's sake. 



'' THY WILL BE DONEr lOI 




CHAPTER V. 

THY WILL BE DONE/' 

jHIS expression is a part of that 
admirable prayer sanctioned by 
the great Head of the Church ; a 
prayer that compasses the needs 
of the human soul as well as the needs of 
God's government in all realms; for certainly 
all realms need the control of a Will backed by 
infinite capacity of control. A prayer which 
is so admirably phrased that through all 
the hot controversies in the bosom of the 
Church it has passed through the lips of all 
controversialists. It is a prayer that can 
be employed by all who accept the idea of a 
Universal Father. Those who are Jews can 
use it ; those who are Unitarians can use it ; 
Universalists are not debarred from its use 
by any single expression found in it. All 
sectarians employ it. It lingers long on the 



102 THE LORD'S PRA YER. 

lips of those in the bosom of the true 
Church. 

And forbid them not, ye ecclesiastics, for 
they are all children of the One Father, who 
is broader every way than your conception 
of Him : One who could not be confined by 
Jewish faith, and who, while Solomon was 
dedicating the Holy Temple, was watching 
the spirit-life of his children of the mountain, 
the plain, and the desert, everywhere ; yet 
doubtless full of regret at the gross ignorance 
which darkened their understandings, cor- 
rupted their hearts, and destroyed their 
bodies. 

And the Church has never put — because it 
has not dared to do so — a limit on the use of 
this prayer. Doubtless it has always put up- 
on it its own interpretation. And why should 
it not? But it never has presumed to say to 
all peoples. This is the prayer, and this the in- 
terpretation of it. No. And yet the Chris- 
tian Church's conception of God is infinitely 
superior to that of any heathen or heretic: 
that conception which is given in Holy Scrip- 
tures. We are highly favored, and yet our 
superior intelligence in the nature of God, in 



*' THY WILL BE DONEr I03 

the principles of His government, in the per- 
sonal peculiarities distinguishing Him, does 
not debar the less favored who have caught 
fitful gleams of Him from uttering a child's 
cry. We know God because we have seen 
His Son — that Son, meek and gentle, who 
with legions of angels at call let the children 
lift Him to the cross, saying only, ** Father, 
forgive them : they know not what they do/* 

O ye who are in schism remember that 
while you may use this prayer, you have no 
right to reject the whole counsel of God. 

Our earthly fathers bear with the ignor- 
ance, wink at the disobedience of the young 
members of the family ; but they do not neg- 
lect to impart to them knowledge as they 
grow older. 

And so has it been with our Great Father 
in heaven. So that the history of the world 
has been a growth, a development in knowl- 
edge, sacred as well as secular. The idea 
of God as given in the creed is the most ad- 
vanced yet formulated, and he who adopts 
another simply accepts some crude concep- 
tion of an earlier age. An atheist, an infidel, 
an Unitarian, is simply accepting some now 



104 THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

wholly obsolete conception of the infinitely 
loving Father of us all. 

But let us show how wonderful a prayer 
the Lord's Prayer is, by the few hints which 
one mind may discover in just one small 
sentence of it. ** Thy will be done on earth 
as it is in heaven." Religion is the adop- 
tion of the principle of man's subordination 
to God, and the practical demonstration of 
it in individual lives. 

Irreligion — under which all evil is pro- 
duced — is the adoption of the idea of man's 
complete independence within the limits of 
this life of God. 

My readers, we are on one side or the 
other. We may pray to God and say, '*Thy 
will be done," and yet persistently do 
everything as we please. 

But few strictly conform to the require- 
ments of God's will, and these only through 
the aid of that Holy Spirit which makes 
the enthroned persons of the Godhead irre- 
sistible everywhere in the realms of space. 

Why should we pray that God's will 
should prevail on earth as in heaven ? 

On earth as in heaven. What is heaven? 



''THY WILL BE DONEr IO5 

Where is heaven ? These are questions 
which the laughing sceptic may ask. He 
may tauntingly say to the Christian, You 
have never seen the place ? No, he has not ; 
nor need he in this connection produce the 
proofs of the existence of such a place. He 
may say heaven is an ideal realm — and I pray 
God to make earth like the heaven is — as de- 
scribed in poet's dream. If you who laugh 
would erect a palace, you put your dreams 
and ideas into some conceivable shape, and 
stating these to an architect, get him to 
make a practical working plan of them. 

What more do we need in the moral and 
spiritual realms ? 

God, in order to give saints to the earth, 
has given us descriptions of a place which 
none of us has seen. Out of that place He 
has let down to us one of those who reside 
there. Now when we pray that on earth 
God*s will may be done as in heaven, we 
pray understandingly. We know precisely 
what we pray for. And now, supposing that 
in reality heaven is a myth, how does that 
affect our prayer ? We pray for a heaven in 
practical development here on earth. 



I06 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

Heaven, by all conceptions of it, is infi- 
nitely superior to earth. Then why should 
we not pray that earth may be as heaven ? 
And you who laugh and do not pray, you 
are so satisfied with earth that you would 
not have it improved. 

Earth has indeed many grand features, 
and all its landscapes, when viewed broadly, 
are noble when the sun shines and the 
temperature is medium. Yet what is any 
one individual experience of it? A person 
may stand on a mountain-peak in summer, 
and say how grand the globe is, but beneath 
his feet on yonder country roads passes the 
procession of mourners over whose bright 
prospects has come an eclipse. 

Will you ask me why God's will should be 
done here where man's will is exercised? 
why man's will should give way to God's? 
I will tell you. 

1st. Because God, and not man, possesses 
knowledge equal to the demands of the phy- 
sical, moral, and spiritual world. 

2d. Because God is, and man is not, wise 
enough to that degree of perfection required 
by the infinitely intricate interplay of the 



'' THY WILL BE DONEr lO/ 

mighty and minute, wholly dependent upon 
a supreme wisdom. 

3d. Because God alone is sufficiently be- 
nevolent and unselfish. 

4th. Because God alone is sufficiently 
comprehensive of vision. 

5th. Because, too, He alone has the power. 

6th. Because He has permanency of stay. 
His life is not like the sunbeam shining on 
the spray, gone the moment it is gazed upon. 

7th. God's will should be because man is 
not made up of those qualities which conserve 
even the transient welfare of any interest. 

Do you, my reader, say that, from 1st to 
7th, these are but pulpit assumptions 
that I personally scout as fancies ? If you 
so affirm, your affirmation is impertinently 
presumptive. 

All systems of thought by the human 
mind are defective even where they rest 
upon practical experiments in the realm of 
nature. There are granted imperfections in 
the theological theory of things, yet they 
are only such as prevent the clearest ex- 
pression of the truth. In which particular 
I say we are not singular ; for as we may 



I08 THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

not most clearly perceive, so we may not 
clearly nor accurately present, and yet we 
may approach sufficiently near to the truth 
to give as reasonable support to our assump- 
tions as the reasoner on exact sciences. 

Consider the element of knowledge asso- 
ciated with the idea of God. 

That a knowledge of all things resides in 
God we are constrained to believe, not only 
because ancient writings denominated holy 
so affirm, but because it must be granted 
that a creator must have a knowledge of 
that which he creates. Not only so, but be- 
cause the product, the earth, shows that the 
producer is acquainted with elements and 
the proportions required to give to earth its 
rock, its earth, its water, its leaf. He who 
could create such, and add thereto living 
creatures endowed with thought, has priority 
of claim that His will should have control. 

Because God is, and man is not, wise to 
that degree of perfection required, do we 
affirm that God's will should be done on 
earth. 

General proofs of God's wisdom are 
everywhere visible. I may and you may 



*' THY WILL BE DONEr IO9 

hesitate to pronounce unqualified praise 
upon certain particular features which pre- 
sent themselves in our experiences. A 
student of nature without any education 
in Revelation would discover defects in 
action, while he admired the comprehensive 
working of the system. 

We do not claim as Christian thinkers that 
the world, looked upon as a whole, shows the 
most complete wisdom ; there are certain 
very prominent and pronounced defects. 
To explain these we bring to you a book and 
say, Read that ; that gives our explanation 
of the flaws which prevent the perfect inter- 
play of every part of lifers varied whole. An 
explanation which is moral, and not for that 
reason necessarily unscientific. Unscientific, 
certainly, while scientific men continue to ig- 
nore history, profane and sacred, the moral 
and spiritual realms, and bend their studies 
to purely physical realms. To account for 
this book is a part of their work who study 
life from its outward phases and accept no 
theory of supernatural communication. 
There the book is, and therein is the expla- 
nation of much that does not show wisdon^ 



no THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

in creation as observed in the realms of air, 
earth, water, blood, nerve, thought. And 
then, too, because man is here and because, 
within certain limits, his judgments, based 
upon purely selfish considerations, prevail, 
do we find certain grave defects prevailing 
— defects which could have been avoided, 
defects entirely the result of his persistent 
self-assertion and willfulness. 

Great changes in the atmosphere are nec- 
essary for the proper regulation of the earth*s 
temperature. If men will, while these are 
going on, attempt to cross the high seas, 
God is not to be charged with folly. 

If great water-floods prevail in certain sec- 
tions of a land at one season and long-con- 
tinued drought at another, because man has 
hewn away the huge forest-trees whose 
leaves in summer sucked the moisture from 
the clouds, and whose great trunks held the 
heaped-up snow from leaping away to the 
river valleys like avalanches from their sides, 
God is not to be charged with folly. 

If from the frozen and rocky bottom of 
the chasm rise the shrieks of mangled and 
burning wretches, God is not to be charged 



''THY WILL BE DONEr III 

with folly, but he who threw that light 
structure of iron across the dizzy heights. 

If cholera sweeps away its thousands from 
the earth, it is because the poison has accu- 
mulated in the air from man*s neglect of 
sewerage in violation of the principles by 
which the Almighty would perpetuate life. 

If our blood is tainted, it is because our 
forefathers of long-forgotten epochs neglect- 
ed both the laws of cleanliness and godliness. 

Man's presumptive and impulsive will, 
backed by appetites wholly selfish, has made 
the virginal earth a gross plague-spot among 
the moving worlds, none of whom were so 
leprous and so foul for centuries ; but thanks 
be to the pure Christ whose words have 
lifted the clouds from men's minds, whose 
Holy Spirit has cleansed their hearts, whose 
life beyond the cross showed that God's will 
was resurrection and life for a world which 
man's will had doomed by the cross to death. 
And so, by that new life we have immortal 
hope for the spiritual and a bright prospect 
for fairer skies, a more fertile earth, better 
physical life for the generations yet to be^ 
for God's will is that both the Temple, man's 



112 THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

physical nature, and its occupant, the soul, 
shall yet show the noblest of aims in Him 
who whispered to earth's dust, Rise and 
bear my image through the eternities. 

Again I ask. Why should God*s will be 
done? Because God alone is sufficiently 
wise. 

That wisdom exists in God is shown in the 
adaptation of right means to the right ends, 
in the material, moral and spiritual realms. 

Are you a thoughtful materialist ? Then we 
agree as to the manifestations of wisdom as 
shown within the realms of matter. 

Are you a moralist ? I ask you to examine 
simply the Ten Commandments, knowing 
that they show wisdom of the most superior 
kind — that obedience to these laws is abso- 
lutely essential to the health and happiness 
of humankind. 

But we go a step further: we claim that 
there is a spiritual realm, and that in that 
realm there has been shown on the part of 
man's creator the highest wisdom in apply- 
ing the right means to satisfy the demands 
of that realm. 

St. Paul shows us very clearly the secret 



''THY WILL BE DONEr II3 

by which, through religion, the spiritual 
nature of man may direct and control, in 
obedience to the law, in all moral and ma- 
terial realms — the Spirit of God, he tells us, 
bearing witness with our spirit. *' There is 
no condemnation to them which are in 
Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh 
but after the spirit." *^For what the law 
could not do in that it was weak through 
the flesh, God sending his own Son in the 
likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin con- 
demned sin in the flesh: That the righteous- 
ness of the law might be fulfilled in us who 
walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.'* 
" Ye are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if 
so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. 
And if Christ be in you the body is dead 
because of sin, but the spirit is life because 
of righteousness. As many as are led by 
the Spirit of God they are the sons of God.*' 
God*s wisdom stands before us plainly 
seen in the method of securing man's obedi- 
ence without oppression, and without quali- 
fying in any degree the independent action 
of men's wills, nor trammelling them in the 
exercise of their own judgments, even when 



114 THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

by so doing He rescues them from situations 
of moral peril. 

The scheme of redemption from beginning 
to end wholly lacks the element of compul- 
sion, while man's methods have partaken 
largely of the warlike. With the sword he 
would propagate a faith, by violence of the 
arm and hand would he estabhsh a reform. 

The wisdom of God is shown in His using 
moral rheans for the salvation of men and 
the rectification of human society. 

And now another reason why God's will 
should be done on earth is His benevolence 
or goodness. In urging this I shall be brief. 
Goodness is that quality of soul which em- 
phasizes the pleasures and profit of all creat- 
ures — that has no prejudice whatever 
except in favor of that which^secures advan- 
tage to the creature. 

Can we clearly show that God is as we 
describe Him by and through his works? 

We may by throwing moral evil, as to its 
origin, where it rightfully belongs, i.e., to the 
simple misdirection of energies and powers 
by a voluntary agent. 

Moral evil is the perversion of good by 



" THY WILL BE DONEr 11$ 

such an agent, who, using thought, judgment 
and will, his God granted powers, went con- 
trary to direction and command. 

God, the wise, the benevolent, had ar- 
ranged the splendid combination of parts so 
perfectly, that each part would work without 
friction with every other part ; He balanced 
wheels on wheels so delicately that, although 
they would work so perfectly, yet they need- 
ed the guidance of man, to whom he dele- 
gated the task. 

Goodness is discernible in this system, 
which so secures happiness if motion is kept 
on the prepared planes of action. Evil is not 
the product of God ; if judged by examples 
from many fields, is the effect of an abnormal 
appetite in men to possess. Most sins in- 
volve the invasion of the rights of ownership. 
God is unselfish to that degree that He gives 
all His thought, bends all His energies, to se- 
cure the happiness of His creatures. 

Again, God's will should be done, because 
He alone has the clearness and comprehen- 
siveness of vision requisite. 

Man's vision is subject to material embar- 
rassment. He cannot, even with his natural 



1 1 6 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

sight unimpaired by disease, see far. He 
cannot see in the heart of another. He can- 
not see the thought of another mind until it 
is uttered. He cannot see, he cannot think, 
beyond the limits of the terms furnished by 
experience and education. Ask a man to 
look within. It is like asking him to look 
into a dark cavern. He sees nothing. Ask 
him to study human nature, and shortly he will 
repeat in your hearing the commonplaces 
which are afloat on the surface of society. 
Ask him to look up, and he has in his mind 
a melange of glittering nothings. His pres- 
cient prophecies are but happy guesses. 
Human sight unclarified of God is neither 
clear nor comprehensive. We trust it along 
old and well-beaten ways of travel, but who 
follows it out on new paths? He is the 
most reliable who simply looks to put each 
stone of the building well in place by the 
square and the plumb-line of truth, looking 
simply at the thing in hand. 

God alone is competent, only because all 
past, all future, is now under His eye. At 
once He sees with equal keenness the near 
and the remote. He beholds all possible 



*' THY WILL BE DONEr II7 

combinations in the mental and material as 
well as the moral and spiritual realm, and 
with His power is able to overrule all com- 
binations. Having this vision we can gladly 
be guided by His eye from humble seats in an 
earthly temple to thrones on the sapphire sea. 

Have we yet spoken of power — God's 
power as compared with man's power? God 
is the creator and source of that stream, in- 
visible yet potential, that sweeps all onward 
and around. Man has no generating force 
or power in himself ; he moves by virtue of 
principles of adaptation ; and so, although 
he may will to move, it is only by connecting 
himself with the main current that he may 
attain his purpose. 

The evidences of man's power may not be 
judged by any one individual. Look at the 
great wall of China — the work of many. 
Look at the Pyramids — the work of perish- 
ing hundreds, if not thousands. Look at 
Rome — the work, not of one man or one 
generation, but millions of men and a thou- 
sand years. Look at America to-day, as 
showing man's power — not the individual, 
but man the many. Look at the realm of 



Il8 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

thought. Is that the product of one giant 
mind? No ; that great ocean was made by 
tributary streams. Look, on the contrary, 
at the earth and then at Neptune. Look at 
the universe — all the work of one God. 
Power has man to raise a massive block a 
few feet in air; God has power to swing a 
world from its path into limitless space. 

Ah, my brethren, by the power of His 
right arm He holds the breath back from our 
lips. ** He raiseth the poor out of the dust 
and lifteth up the beggar to set them among 
the princes and to make them inherit the 
throne of glory, for the pillars of the earth are 
the Lord*s, and He hath set the world upon 
them.'' ** He will keep the feet of his saints, 
and the wicked shall be silent in darkness : 
for by strength shall no man prevail." 

And why, again, should God's will be 
done? Because He has permanency of stay. 
Firm in place, firm in purpose, nothing can 
move the God of heaven. 

From the time when the morning stars to- 
gether sang until that which is to come 
when the angel shall proclaim, ** Time was, 
time is, but time shall be no longer,'' God 



''THY WILL BE DONEr II9 

remains the same. Man's life is brief. He 
conceives great plans, but dies when they 
are but partially executed. He accumulates 
for others to dissipate. Men tremble, fear- 
ing the failure of Christianity. It cannot 
fail, because it is the will of God in execu- 
tion and God is ever here to protect it. 

And now, what is God's will ? 

1st. God's will is that we should love Him, 
honor Him, obey Him. 

How shall we love one whom we have not 
seen ? 

We cannot love Him without reflection. 
We cannot love a pure abstraction. We 
may repeat the words, '' I love God," but 
they will be meaningless. 

God knew that His children could not love 
Him without knowing who He was, and so 
He willed that the fact that He first loved us 
should become known to us. 

If you v/ould love God study the revela- 
tions of His love for His children in history. 
I need not here enumerate the many in- 
stances where He has shown a smiling face, 
a loving heart, to His children. The heavens 
show God's love ; the earth is not silent ; she, 
too, testifies that God is love. 



I20 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

The Christ whom we bow before is a reve- 
lation of God*s love. 

It is God's will that we should love Him, 
honor Him, obey Him. 

2d. It is God's will that we should love 
ourselves. He who puts his own will in op- 
position to God's will does not love himself. 
For God's will is not arbitrary — it simply is 
regulative and conserving. 

Man's will is only opposed to God's will 
where it runs against man's own longest in- 
terests. If a man with anything of advan- 
tage to-day that will entail no disadvantage 
in the future, then is there no opposition 
between God's will and man's will. 

God's will — in my conception of it, a con- 
ception that reconciles me to that will — is 
that God seeks, not his own aggrandizement, 
but the glory of his creatures. 

That self-sacrifice is a law of his life — that 
instead of seeking his own, his whole exist- 
ence is an infinite series of outgivings. 

Therefore, the law, which is his syllabled 
will, is not an egotistic system overhanging 
mankind, but,/^r contra, simply a statement 
of those underlying principles, through obedi- 



*' THY WILL BE DONEr 121 

ence to which immortality or continuous ex- 
istence could be secured to the part physi- 
cal and part spiritual being called man. 

By the law I mean not the minute and 
petty details which are conspicuously pre- 
sented in the history of a particular people 
just entering upon a social and national life. 
I refer to those laws and commandments 
ten. These show God better than every 
turn of historic circumstance in the life of a 
nation whose contingencies called for meas- 
ures which cannot claim the commendation 
of calmer times. 

National exigences demanding methods 
which in individual life would have been 
considered unjustifiable and wholly wrong. 

3d. God's will is the glory and the good 
of man. 

Again, and in order that this may be ac- 
complished, it is his will that Christ may be 
received on earth. 

He was driven away once, although Satan 
had been received and kept with entertain- 
ment of the best. 

God's will is that Satan should be bound 
and that His Son should reign. 



122 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

You cannot in any age, by any representa- 
tion, change the nature of that conflict 
raging in the bosoms of men. 

You cannot devise a system of teaching 
that is Christian that will ignore the neces- 
sity of the dethronement of Satan and the 
exaltation of Christ. 

God's will is being done in this particular. 
I have said but little of Satan's will — he 
whose defeat is a matter of time. He un- 
doubtedly employs every agency to thwart 
the purposes of God in Christ. 

We must believe that the opposition to 
God's will so universal is inspired by one 
Great Spirit whose designs are most dark 
and sinister. 

We cannot believe that this opposition is 
without any intelligent direction. That no 
central head conceives and executes. The 
methods employed have the same ultimate 
issue — the death in men's souls of virtue, 
We perceive in the effect, no matter how di- 
verse the operations, the guidance of him 
who is opposed to God. 

God's will is an uncompromising will. 
Satan is ready to compromise. He will gild 



*' THY WILL BE DONEr I23 

the approaches to the grave with gentle 
words. 

And there be many who would have those 
who represent — Truth, Purity, Holiness, deal 
gently with those who by the world, in open 
arms against God, are thought to be disgrac- 
ing the cause. The Angel of Doom desires 
nothing but compromise. Like the false 
mother claiming the child before Solomon, 
who was willing it should be cut in two — al- 
though she knew it would destroy the 
child's life — the Evil One is willing represent- 
ative Christians should serve both Christ and 
himself until the red line of the martyr's 
blood is hidden by the accumulated foulness 
of sin. But God is the true parent — he 
would have the whole or none. 

Let us learn to do the will of God. We 
may have to deny ourselves, not in meats 
and drink alone, but in the pleasures and 
pastimes which neutralize our influence 
Christward. That we may not pray all 
abroad, we are to strive to do God's will in 
ourselves. 

God's will may be seen by each of us pre- 
senting itself to our consciences each day we 
live. 



124 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

Let us keep ourselves open skyward, so 
that every descending help may without 
hindrance enter our hearts. 

The will of God in the trifling details of a 
petty life can only be accomplished by one 
who is in the atmosphere of the unceasing 
prayer, **Thy will be done/' 

One who leaves out every other request 
and simply prays this, *^Thy will be done,'* 
shall surely in having this answered secure 
every needed blessing. 

Dost thou need to say, ^* Lord, forgive ?" 
Then simply pray, ^^Thy will be done." 
Shall not God forgive ? For what did Christ 
live and die, if not that thou shouldst pray, 
** Father, forgive ?" 

Dost thou wish to pray, ** Lord, guide my 
thoughts?" Then simply pray, **Thy will 
be done." Shall he not guide? For other 
purpose did not Christ our Saviour live. 

Dost thou desire to pray when dying, 
'* Lord, take me to thyself?" Then simply 
say, "Thy will be done." 

God's will is that thou shalt say, "Thy 
will, O God! be done." But, lastly, let 
me say that the highest will of God is " to 
rescue souls from death." 



'* THY WILL BE DONEr 12$ 

" The soul's high price 
Is writ in all the conduct of the skies. 
The soul's high price is the creation's key, 
Unlocks its mysteries and naked lays 
The genuine cause of every deed divine.'' 

What is God's will, I ask ? The poet 
answers. It is : 

" To lift us from this abject, to sublime ; 

This flux, to permanent ; this dark, to day ; 

This foul, to pure ; this turbid, to serene ; 

This mean, to mighty. 

For this glorious end 

The Almighty, rising, his long Sabbathbroke. 

Angels undrew the curtain of the throne, 

And Providence came forth to meet mankind." 



126 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 




CHAPTER VI. 

■GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD/' 

low many who make this request 
think, while doing so, of the carnal 
side of the petition ; think only of 
perishing food, beseeching God as 
if He were simply a great commissary gen- 
eral. How few who use it employ it in that 
spiritual sense which undoubtedly best suits 
the ear of One who is a Spirit, who to be 
worshipped aright must be worshipped in 
spirit and in truth. 

Bread in the Scriptures is thus spiritual- 
ized in the sixth chapter of St. John, at the 
32d verse. It is recorded that Jesus said to 
the Jews: ** Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, 
but my Father giveth you the true bread 
from heaven. For the bread of God is He 
which Cometh down from heaven and giveth 
life unto the world.'' Then said they unto 



GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. 12/ 

Him : ^* Lord, evermore give us this bread." 
Jesus said unto them : '^ I am the bread of 
life ; he that cometh to me shall never 
hunger ; he that believeth on me shall never 
thirst." . . . ^^ It is the spirit thatquick- 
eneth, the flesh profiteth nothing : the words 
that I speak unto you, they are spirit — they 
are Hfe." 

I propose to present thoughts favoring the 
employment of this prayer for daily bread 
in both the material and spiritual senses, for 
certainly he who makes it is both a material 
and spiritual being. 

We are dependent upon God in both 
realms. Yet in both are we to work. We 
are to earn our bread — physical bread — in 
sorrow. ** In the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat bread till thou return unto the 
ground." We are to work out our salvation, 
God working with us. 

How shall we secure the supply of our 
physical needs ? 

Certain qualities are essential to success in 
securing perishing bread. 

1st. One must be honest and conscien- 
tious. 



128 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

Honesty is said to be the best policy. My 
hearers, we well know it is the only policy. 

Again, capacity is essential to success. 
Whatever one undertakes, he must have a 
degree of ability. Not that all who attain 
the most advantage in a calling or pursuit 
are, therefore, the most capable. Frequently 
will you find men enjoying a large income 
from a pursuit with which they are but 
slightly acquainted, while the men by whose 
skill they thrive earn a meagre day's wages, 
and feel most disagreeably the practical ap- 
plication of the language : ** In the sweat of 
thy face shalt thou eat bread." 

But capacity .there must be on the part of 
the vast majority who would earn their 
bread. 

Again, industry is required. 

One may be honest and capable, yet, if he 
lack this third quality, he will starve. With- 
out industry, which is energy rightly em- 
ployed, honesty and capacity count for noth- 
ing. 

Action there must be in this practical 
every-day world. One who idles away the 
hours given for earning that for which he 



GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. 1 29 

prays, is not likely to receive much benefit 
from his prayers. 

Man was not made for idleness. Activ- 
ity of both mind and body are essential to 
his perfect physical health — but activity un- 
der the proper conditions. It is a law of 
life, this, that man must work, and it is well 
that most men's necessities compel them to 
work. Labor is not in itself a curse, but 
labor may be so enforced and placed under 
such conditions that it becomes a curse. 
Some forms of industry are an absolute lux- 
ury, yet others are disagreeable and disgust- 
ing to an extreme degree. And men may 
not be choosers. Who, for instance, would 
naturally choose to delve in the earth, or to 
climb to extreme heights ? Yet this kind of 
work is done, and hundreds — yea, thousands 
— of men may be found to engage in it. The 
necessity of working for bread, however, 
gives us grand results indeed. The sailor 
climbs to the shrouds with the masts sway- 
ing with the rocking sea, and the broad ex- 
panse of an ocean's breast is white with 
moving sail. The miner enters the deep 
caverns of the earth to labor, exposed to the 



I30 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

danger of falling rock, or fire-damp, and gives 
us by his toil that which makes thousands of 
homes happy during long hours of the win- 
ter. Yea, our gold, our silver, our diamonds 
and precious stones, come to us because 
man's need for bread compels him to stoop 
to pursuits which, though menial, are yet 
honorable. And he, the laborer, may be 
like the precious ore which he extracts — 
rough on the exterior, but capable of becom- 
ing by the polishing of grace one of the 
most beautiful ornaments of God's royal 
palace. 

Then, too, he who would prepare for the 
days when physical strength shall have fled, 
so that the pantry may not be empty, must 
practice economy. Economy is the secret 
of a community's growth. Without the 
savings of the poor, how many of our great 
public institutions would be destroyed. 
Economy, while it benefits the individual 
who practises it, also benefits the State at 
large. 

Large cities grow because savings banks 
have the saved earnings of the poor to loan 
builders. Railroads connect sections of our 



GIVE US THIS DAY O UR DA II Y BREAD. I 3 1 

public domain because there are in this 
country so many of the surplus savings to 
invest which without the practice of econo- 
my would have been frittered av/ay in drink- 
ing saloons, on clothes and ornaments su- 
perfluous and extravagant ; and these solid 
benefits would have remained only in the 
dreams of their present projectors. Bene- 
fits, indeed, for by and through them so 
many honest, capable, industrious and eco- 
nomical persons are enabled to work as well 
as pray for their daily bread. 

We have noted the qualities to be used in 
securing perishing bread. These qualities 
are absolutely required before even a neces- 
sary can be secured. 

And who would like, after all, to be re- 
lieved from the practice of any of them? 
Do we make a virtue of necessity ? Our ne- 
cessity compels us to the practice of virtue. 
The rich and idle are of but little benefit to 
themselves. Yet the rich may be, and are, 
public benefactors to a large degree. Yet if 
all were rich, all would be poor and hungry. 
Wealth would not exist simply because there 
would be nothing to exchange. The fields 



1^2 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

would remain uncultivated ; the stores 
closed. A man here and there, as the pro- 
duct of the present system of labor, may 
personally perform no manual labor, yet his 
money is active and is benefiting others be- 
cause it is invested. 

In a social state like ours the rich are rich 
because of the practice in the past of hon- 
esty, industry and economy. 

Yes, you say, we know all this. Well, I 
do not propose to tell you anything that 
your own observation has not confirmed. I 
simply wish, in the line of thought demanded 
by my subject, to enforce certain practical 
lessons pertinent thereto which will make 
the Lord's Prayer one of the most useful of 
prayers in your estimation. Let us now 
briefly consider the relation of our Heavenly 
Father to this labor problem. 

God comes in just here. You look abroad 
at the multiplied industries and methods of 
earning, and yet they all depend on the fer- 
tility and fecundity of yonder fields. The 
earth we tread is the feeding mother of all. 
Grains and grasses hold up the entire super- 
structure. Should that earth refuse for one 



GIVE US THIS DA Y OUR BAIL V BREAD, 1 33 

single season to give us grass or grain, death 
would silence the harsh dissonance of in- 
dustry throughout the world. 

Man opens the soil ; man scatters the 
germs of future harvests into the earth ; 
man closes the light, loose earth as a warm 
covering over them ; man retires, for he has 
done his part. And now, what next? In 
obedience to laws of chemical change in earth 
and air that seed is to germinate and grow. 

Has God nothing to do ? Does He not 
control and regulate? Is it all subject to 
law alone? 

The conclusion of one's own mind, with- 
out a written revelation, is that so complete 
a system is the product of an infinite intelli- 
gence. 

Man is dependent on this earth ; the earth 
is dependent upon God. Man cannot make 
that corn sprout. He can but simply de- 
posit it in the earth. The laws of germination 
prevail everywhere in all realms, vegetable 
and animal ; yet each sound and sensible 
mind believes that they are regulated and 
controlled by an intelligent Being, 

Why the need of prayer? 



134 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

1st. Because it is commanded. 

2d. Because the effect of prayer upon the 
one who prays is of incalculable benefit. The 
praying spirit is a spirit most beautiful to 
contemplate. 

It gives one a sense of dependence upon 
a superior being. 

It consecrates and sanctifies labor. 

Even if I cannot show by any of the laws 
of nature the necessity for this request on 
the part of man for bread, I can show a 
great benefit accruing to the person who 
employs it. 

Man himself is affected by prayer, and 
that is the ultimate aim of every religious 
principle, sentiment and action. 

He who uses this prayer, now that Christ 
has commanded it, and without questioning 
the advantage to be gained by it, has at- 
tained a state most enviable. So high a Chris- 
tian state is it, and so sure of gaining every 
gift which the willing heavens can drop into 
his treasury. 

Ask and ye shall receive, is the command 
and the promise. But ask for that heavenly 
manna. Ask that this bread which came 
down from heaven may be received by you. 



GIVE US THIS DA V OUR DAILY BREAD. 135 

He who reads the words of Christ in the 
Gospels must gather from them this thought, 
that our success or failure, in a monetary 
or in a social sense, is not of nearly so 
much interest to Heaven as our success or 
failure as a moral and spiritual being. 

God's purpose in putting you and me here 
was not to establish any earthly empire, but 
the rather that we might work out for our- 
selves, through faith, a permanent and im- 
mortal pleasure, and solve this mixed prob- , 
lem of pain for ourselves, with the aid of 
that key-name of destiny, Jesus, lover of 
souls. 

Man's material triumphs are worthy of the 
applause of men, but yet his moral triumphs 
to the holy angels seem most worthy of 
their song. 

Look for a moment at this wonderful de- 
velopment of time. I know that we are as 
yet on the wrong side of the tapestry ; yet 
even here we can catch the general plan, 
though indistinctly. 

I mean this Supreme Will bringing to pass 
His great plan through the action of millions 
upon millions of independent wills. 



136 THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

This working out on the great frame-work 
and scaffolding of time a plan of salvation 
wherein an infinite number of petty yet inde- 
pendent wills have the settlement of their 
own destinies, without altering in any re- 
spect the grand plan of the Sovereign Will, 
is that which not only wins admiration, but 
bids us pause and silences our souls with 
amazement, so great and continuous a mira- 
cle is it of wisdom and power. 

But to the argument: 

I have shown that while we pray for 
perishing bread, we must not neglect to 
work for it. Now let me show that while 
we are taught to pray for spiritual bread 
we are also taught that we are not exempt 
from work on spiritual lines. Although this 
food is a gift of God, yet it is not secured 
without effort. 

We are not simply passive recipients of 
heavenly bestowments. Faith is a positive 
putting forth of energies on right lines. 

Possessed of it one's life is full of demon- 
strations of righteousness. One filled with 
faith is active in every sphere of good. 
Faith gathers knowledge from th^ written 



GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAIIY BREAD. 13/ 

and 'the spoken word. Every agency through 
which the bread of life is received is a sacred 
instrument of God. 

Is not the bread of hfe much more worth 
our effort than this wheaten bread which 
sours with the keeping ? Let us then put 
forth every effort, even if we neglect earthly 
necessities. God has most wisely made his 
gifts contingent on a faith which demon- 
strates its existence by works. We are to 
work as well as pray. 

Prayer is the expression of our faith. 
Work is the application of our powers. We 
need to be directed in the application of 
these so that we will not w^aste them in ill» 
directed efforts. 

He who pray intelligently recognize that 
over and above all the laws of production 
there is a superintending and directing provi- 
dence in whose care we place ourselves, who 
will give us that for which we pray if it be 
His will, if it be in His judgment best for us. 

God's will acts upon knowledge which it 
is not possible for us to gain. The right of 
God to answer or to refrain from answering 
is involved in prayen If it were not Ave 



138 THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

should demand from God, whereas we now 
simply request. 

In praying for the supply of our temporal 
wants as opposed to our temporal needs we 
may pray with less assurance of success than 
when praying for spiritual wants. 

Again, we lack the spiritual graces most 
who have the most of this world's gifts, yet 
I would say this with a qualification. 

For the temper of the poor is ofttimes 
querulous and exacting, while the temper of 
the rich is arrogant, impudent and exacting. 
That was a wise prayer of Agurs : ^^ Give 
me neither poverty nor riches ; feed me with 
food convenient for me, lest I be full and 
deny thee . . . and say who is the Lord, or lest 
I be poor and steal, and take the name of 
my God in vain." No, those who occupy the 
mean between poverty and affluence give us 
in this Christian land the best specimens of a 
social and spiritual life. 

Such as these have that true temper which 
great possessions and great poverty prevent. 

These have no cause of complaint against 
God, for in response to prayer and work 
their physical needs are supplied, hence their 



GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD, 1 39 

hearts are warm with the presence of a love 
which is the product of a spiritual enrich- 
ment, a nourishment which is rich in soul- 
sustaining qualities. 

God's willingness to feed His children is a 
thought worthy of our reflection. 

He is a father. Shall an earthly father 
give his children a stone when they ask for 
bread? How much more will Our Father in 
heaven give good gifts to those who ask 
Him, is the sense of an utterance of our 
blessed Lord which you will all recall. 

The very fact that Christ gave us this 
prayer shows God's fatherly willingness to 
give us every good and perfect gift. 

Giving us Himself Christ gives us expecta- 
tions of immortality. Contrast one who has 
no certitudes of hope for the world which 
impinges on this with that one who hastens 
gladly forward to greet his Lord at the 
threshold of the world celestial. The con- 
trast is marked : it was such a contrast as St. 
Paul presented to King Agrippa. That 
which Agrippa had not was the full per- 
suasion that the risen Lord would give him 
greeting and reward in the world where 



I40 , THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

there are no graves — a persuasion which was 
the apostle's — for this he put his life in jeop- 
ardy. The assurance of final triumphs 
caused him to hold every human interest 
light as compared with the glory that was to 
be revealed hereafter. 

This hungering no more because God 
gives us the bread of heaven is a consumma- 
tion devoutly to be wished. 

To feel that when we launch our spirit 
bark away it will be piloted safe into the 
heaven of eternal rest, is an experience we 
would have. I know nothing which would 
be to you so pleasant an assurance as this, 
that whatever your present may be your 
future is safe. 

This labor lost, love's labor lost, is toiling 
through the lagging hours for each day's 
physical necessities, feeling that this is all 
one has, and at the end but little hope, no 
taste of heavenly manna, to go out of life at 
the last with a spiritual hunger unappeased. 

God save us from the husks of the truth 
when we ought to feed on the prepared food 
of God. 

God save us from getting but these, to go 



GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. I4I 

to Him with no ripe spiritual experience to 
present. 

Contrast again St. Paul at the last, having 
eaten of the spiritual food of his Father, ripe 
in wisdom and righteous attainment, with 
any one of us perhaps. 

Who enter God's holy temple, reach out 
our hands for holy food and depart with 
thoughts of evil — cherished evil — in our 
hearts. Shall we jeopardize our lives to 
advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ as did 
St. Paul ? No, indeed, not we. Do we press 
toward the mark for the prize of our high 
calling? Are our feetw^inged like Mercury's 
with energy which the bread of heaven gives? 

In conclusion let me say that although we 
are to pray for temporal things, we are to 
so pray with the understanding that tem- 
poral things, because they are transient, are 
in no sense vital to that economy of grace 
which Jesus Christ established, and may be 
possible hindrances to our rising with Christ. 

Secondly, that while, too, we are not to 
neglect to pray for temporal prosperity, we 
are not to neglect those natural laws of 
political economy by which such may be 



142 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

attained. Thirdly, that while we pray for 
health we are not to neglect the laws of 
hygiene ; while Ave pray for wealth we are 
not to neglect honesty, industry, economy; 
while we pray for happiness we are not to 
neglect the practice of that amiability of 
disposition, that kindliness of mien, that 
mannerliness of deportment, that spirit of 
indifference to injuries and slights that make 
a neighborhood peaceful. 

Remembering that even then that there is 
a realm spiritual above this which is possible 
of attainment. 

Let us hereafter strive — if heretofore we 
have not striven — to use this prayer for daily 
bread as the expression of a spiritual desire 
and a request for a spiritual satisfaction of 
that desire, and so He who clothes the earth 
in spring-time with its rich mantle shall 
clothe us, who have taken little thought of 
life's temporalities in the intensity of our 
desire for the bread of heaven, which per- 
isheth not in the using, but produces in him 
who eats a fibre of soul that no fret in the 
endless cycles of experience which shall come 
to and go from each of us, shall wear away. 



''AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES:' I43 




CHAPTER VII. 

''AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES/' 

BIN in the course of nature cannot 
be forgiven ; I mean sin defined as 
the violation of law or sin defined 
as an offence against nature, in- 
dividuals, or society or government must 
stand. A wrong act is always associated with 
time and place in the mind. Memory re- 
tains each event, although it may not be re- 
called at will at any subsequent period of 
time. 

A wrong done may not be erased from 
the place, the time, the person, nor the re- 
membrance of the person. 

Sin being a departure from those laws 
which perpetuate continuous life, may not 
return upon its tracks to restore to any part 
of nature its life principle ; so that he who 
embarrasses life action in any way has no 
power to restore the free and fair play of it* 



144 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

God's laws concern the physical, the men- 
tal, the moral, the spiritual realms. If dis- 
obeyed by man in any one of these depart- 
ments, such disobedience entails the forfeiture 
of some essential quality of that realm. 

The scientist, the statesman, the theolo- 
gian should see God's relation to man as 
that of a Creator and Conservor of the crea- 
ture man in all these realms. 

Sin defined as a disobedience of the law 
of God would include any violation affecting 
the harmony of movement in any one of 
these realms. 

Take for illustration the mental realm. 
As we study in the light of modern science 
the relation of the brain to the mind and 
soul, we get a wonderful illumination re- 
specting the meaning of that line of teach- 
ing presented by Christ, i,e,, that sin is in 
the heart, or the thought realm — that the 
outward act constitutes not the moral 
offence. 

Take this realm of thought to which I am 
referring, and does not this conviction force 
itself upon you, that every thought enter- 
tained must affect to a greater or less degree 



''AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSESr I45 

the instrument through which it is brought 
into conscious being? that we wear out both 
by the use and the abuse of our minds ? — the 
use of our minds on lawful lines temperate- 
ly? the abuse of our minds i,n the considera- 
tion of things lawful to an intemperate de- 
gree, in the consideration of things unlawful 
either temperately or intemperately ? 

Let this truth be impressed upon you, 
that intemperate thinking on lawful subjects 
and thinking of any kind contrary to nature 
are injurious to the mind, and will in time 
blunt its powers of accurate discernment and 
destroy its nice balance ; although they may 
never wholly unfit it for use in a world of 
society, the prevailing tone of which is, as 
compared with the requirements of a spirit- 
ual Being, extremely low. 

Again, I ask you to note the truth of this 
observation, z>., ^' no act but afTects that 
through w^hich it acts and the place and per- 
sons where and with whom the act is 
performed." With this observation duly 
emphasized our individual responsibility as- 
sumes a most formidable and even terrifying 
aspect. The wear and tear of ordinary pur- 



146 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

suits regularly pursued are great. Consti- 
tuted as we are we are able to do just so 
much, freely and freshly. Is our occupation 
composing and arranging thought? The 
physical labor attendant thereupon soon 
exhausts one. The lifting of the pen, the 
constrained attitude will in a few hours ex- 
haust our physical strength, and then too 
the brain wearies and thought becomes im- 
possible. If the exhaustion of the nature by 
legitimate labor is so great, and the effect 
gradually destructive, how much more rapid 
is destruction wrought by irregularity in 
conduct. True is it, too, that our acts have 
changed and are changing the face of nature, 
the place where our acts are performed. 
This, you know, is true, that nature is 
strangely responsive because strangely sym- 
pathetic. 

Great storms are caused by atmospheric 
changes, and such storms do. affect the earth. 
We are aware of the slow or rapid changes 
produced in the contour of the earth by great 
storms. It has been observed that improper 
drainage will produce atmospheric changes, 
and affect too the moral as well as the phys-. 



''AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES.'' 147 

ical character of the population of a dis- 
trict. 

Then again : It is a truth observable and 
not easily to be ignored by one who would 
partially explain the great problem of sin, 
that a loss of vital integrity in men will pro- 
duce inertia decay both in the inhabitants 
of a section as well as in their physical sur- 
roundings. It is also observable that the 
importation of knowledge and ideas of free- 
dom has improved men morally and physi- 
cally and at the same time improved the 
land all about them, lessening the amount 
of crime and adding to the practice of vir- 
tue. The cultivation of a man's taste 
changes the physical aspects of his sur- 
roundings and to considerable degree im- 
proves the outward features of his moral- 

ity. 

The indelible nature of a man's acts are 
everywhere observable. The sins of igno- 
rance and the wilful sins of men in past ages 
may be seen still in their effects to-day. 
And I define everything as a sin that has 
embarrassed the natural unfoldings of the 
true, the beautiful and the good in every 



148 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

realm, physical, moral, intellectual, and spir- 
itual. 

Sin, in its effect, has been brought down 
to our time, shall we say by transmission ? 

Undoubtedly there is a great deal of truth 
in the theory of transmission, yet there is 
truth too in this, that history shows us 
modifications of original traits through dif- 
fering circumstances and surroundings. 

Let me now throw out a number of 
thoughts upon the forgiveness of sin. 

The question of the consequences of sin is 
an almost insurmountable barrier to any 
belief in the justice of that forgiveness which 
is the prerogative of the Most High God. 

The events of time will forever stand as 
the events of time. Sinful actions w^ill al- 
ways stand in their place in history. No 
amount of cleansing can purge from the his- 
tory of man the record of his great trans- 
gression. God may forgive the actor, but He 
cannot blot from the record of times events 
the deed of infamy in which he was con- 
cerned. 

To God's forgiveness of a moral being we 
cannot affix a limit. The consequences of 



''AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES:' I49 

sin as conceived of and held by certain 
schools of thought do render it impossible 
for the Almighty to pardon the sinner be- 
cause they do actually hold that He is bound 
by the necessities of an equilibrium in that 
law which was m^ade for man's government 
— I mean, Do render it impossible for the 
Almighty to pardon man without the inter- 
position of a makeweight. 

Justice and mercy, two attributes of God, 
are conceived of as arrayed against each 
other. A personal God in a dilemma put 
by two attributes wholly lacking personality. 
They confound sin and its consequences 
with the sinner: and affirm that from the 
Cross went forth that which stayed the con- 
sequences of sin, which was something inde- 
pendent of faith and yet which gave to per- 
sonal faith its saving qualities : the Cross, 
as such makeweight, rendering it possible 
for God to extend mercy to man. This is 
the conception of certain schools of thought, 
one which I do not deny; yet, let me give 
another view of God which to a degree af- 
fects the whole subject of sin, its consequen- 
ces ; the whole subject of forgiveness and the 



150 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

consequences of such forgiveness. When we 
come to this question of law which the sin- 
ner violates, we say that the written law is 
but the statement of a uniformity of move- 
ment in all realms of which God is the first 
and efficient cause. And because He is the 
first and efficient cause he can avert a con- 
sequence, he can dissolve a false combination, 
he can reconstitute things disarranged. Let 
us look now at a conception of God's method 
of restoring to man his divine image. 

Early did God magnify the law and make 
it honorable, visiting his people with pros- 
perity, asking in return obedience and wor- 
ship. And when they had strayed away 
into sinful courses wooing them back be- 
cause they were worthy to be won. 

By every argument striving to save them 
from the evil effects of scepticism and un- 
faith. Finally sending to them His own Son 
to live amongst them. By whose life, in all 
phases of it, triumphing over every earthly 
impediment, we are to be filled w^ith life. 
He rendering it possible for God to forgive 
only those who were won to God by the 
love of which He was an evidence. There 



''AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES:' l<,l 

may be more in all this than we can clearly 
see, but there is enough in this, for it enables 
us to rest our salvation in a life rather than 
upon a death. 

We need to see in God through Christ the 
holy, the fatherly, the loving, the tender, the 
true. He can forgive when we sue for for- 
giveness. We are constrained to sue for 
forgiveness by inducements that were not 
offered under any pre-Christian aspect of 
God. Notwithstanding the theory of the 
satisfaction of justice by the crucifixion of 
our blessed Lord, we must do just what had 
to be done before — sue for forgiveness be- 
fore we can be forgiven. 

Forgiveness is necessary, as between per- 
sons. In a personal government forgiveness 
must be asked for, and it must be granted. 
I have said that the sin cannot be forgiven, 
yet this is true, that God as a Creator may 
prevent a disobedience in the natural realm 
from going to most disastrous issue. Then, 
too, I have said that the sinner may be 
forgiven : God, as a Father, may — yes, — 
"■^^ rtUist forgive a child who has disobeyed a 
law. 



152 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

A man wilfully misplaces a switch ; God 
may avert the consequences by the delay of 
the train, or by the discovery of the state of 
the track before the train arrives. 

But the man who misplaced that switch, 
if he regret doing the act, God can pardon 
him if he sue for forgiveness. The spirit of 
God may change his character. God stands 
as Creator and Ruler of the physical uni- 
verse, and He also stands as a personal ruler 
of persons. We now% my hearers, affirm the 
necessity of forgiveness in a moral govern- 
ment. 

There are those w^ho think that forgive- 
ness is not necessary, because they do not 
believe in the personal responsibility of man 
to a personal God. All sin is a sin against 
a fixed constitution .of things, and entails 
consequences which may or may not be 
averted by purely natural agencies. Who 
do not deny to nature restorative qualities, 
and who do not deny to the life qualities in 
us a resurrection, but these qualities have 
no identity hereafter ; they go into another 
organism, w^hich, too, in its turn decays, and 
so on ad iiifinituin. 



'' AlSfD FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES:' 153 

But in our creed forgiveness is necessary. 

We affirm that forgiveness is necessary, 
because God requires it. 

We affirm that God requires nothing but 
that which secures man's highest good, and 
so when he tells us to ask for forgiveness, it 
is because our compliance with such a requi- 
sition evinces a will pliable to that will which 
leads to the highest reaches of development. 

We affirm, again, that for us to ask for 
forgiveness is necessary, because the punish- 
ment of transgression can only be lifted on 
request. 

How shall we prove our affirmations to 
one who denies man's responsibility to God? 
We need not attempt to prove them to one 
who does. 

How shall I prove to you that we must 
ask God for forgiveness before He can par- 
don? 

Shall I bring proof from the customs of 
men with men — customs which are simply 
the outcome of this teaching of Christ ? This 
alone would give Christ a superiority of 
place over all other teachers in an age when 
the principle and practice was that of re- 



154 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

venge and retaliation. To-day we are 
taught to forgive as we would be forgiven. 

But are we taught to forgive unless for- 
giveness is asked for ? 

Does God forgive those^who do not ask 
for forgiveness ? 

Passages there are in Scripture which do 
show the willingness of God to forgive. God 
does express by word, and by His Son's 
life, the intensity of His affection for erring 
ones, yet the whole method of God is an ef- 
fort to induce me to sue for forgiveness. 

In the very nature of things the consent 
of the sinner is required before pardon can 
be signified. 

The anxiety of the sinner is a necessary 
condition, otherwise there will be no appre- 
ciation of the pardon, 

Let us now briefly examine the great 
question of God's power to pardon. 

Here we affirm that God has never been 
shut off from the power of pardon by man 
as a moral agent, considered as a moral 
agent : because a moral agent, to be such, 
must constantly be in a position of possible 
change. He must have freedom of choice 



''AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES^ 155 

to be responsible. If he be doomed, with- 
out a divine interposition by inexorable des- 
tiny, he is no longer a responsible being. 

After the creation of a creature who, by 
his own will, could '' fall," there must, in the 
very nature of things, have been possible to 
such creature, unless with such fall his re- 
sponsibility ceased, a return to his former 
rectitude. 

That such was possible we know in fact. 
Adam was restored to God's favor. God 
forgave him. 

Men transgressed God's holy laws again 
and again, acting as moral agents, and God 
spake to them through the prophets, using 
arguments in the form of appeal, arguments 
in the form of prophecy. Again, note 
God's redemption of men by Christ is con- 
tingent wholly upon men's acceptance of 
Christ. 

This does not compel us to adopt a sys- 
tem vv^hich made Christ's death necessary to 
the Father. God so loved the world that He 
gave to the world His only begotten Son, 
to the end that all that believe on Him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life. 



156 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

Gave His Son to enlighten, to uplift. The 
other idea, which puts all the saving on the 
Cross, destroys the question of man's respon- 
sibility altogether. Because man sins when 
he may obey, he must of his own accord 
seek forgiveness. In Adam all men died 
spiritually. But each died because he willed 
to die voluntarily. Physical death may have 
been the effect of one man's transgression ; 
this we do not dispute ; but this by Christ's 
death was not changed. Men die in this era 
of Christianity just as they died before 
Christ expired on the Cross. Reconcilia- 
tion through Christ does not save a person 
from physical death. We do not see where- 
in the death of Jesus Christ changed the 
character of sin in the sinner. Indeed, after 
the illuminations granted by Christ living, w^e 
who sin now are greater sinners than w^ere 
those Jews. 

But there are schools of thought that 
teach that in some occult, mysterious and 
wholly unexplainable way Jesus Christ's 
dying changed the relation of all men to- 
ward God, so that He before such death, even 
though He was Almighty, could not save 



AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES:' 157 

them. And persist in this view, although it 
destroys the theory of man's responsibiHty. 

What, then, is the outcome of this doc- 
trine of man's voluntary sin? This is the 
outcome — voluntary forgiveness. Our salva- 
tion is by moral means, aided by the Holy 
Spirit of God. 

If the other theory is correct — and who 
will say it is not ? — then Christ in dying re- 
stored all men to primeval innocence, re- 
moved the inheritance of depravity and 
started men afresh. After His death one 
could not say, ^^ In sin hath my mother con- 
ceived me — no, I start in life as pure as 
Adam.'' Well, we know practically that we 
start in no such condition. Around us is no 
atmosphere of Eden. 

God to-day can no more pardon the indi- 
vidual without his request, without destroy- 
ing his individuality and responsibility, than 
He could have done this before Adam sinned 
and Christ was promised. To-day to men 
God's love must be presented in all its clear 
shinings forth, breathing in flame that con- 
sumes not before the eye as to Moses ; burn- 
ing o'er the foreheads of God's ministers as 



158 THE LORD'S PRAYER, 

in the day of Pentecost; speaking not in 
thunder, but in the still small voice. 

The forgiveness of men is a gift. It is 
something that cannot be purchased. Yet 
we cling to the theory of satisfaction not- 
withstanding its evident irreconcilability to 
this, that man must ask for forgiveness. 

In this Lord's Prayer we are requested to 
say, Forgive as we forgive. 

At first view, there is a seeming inconsist- 
ency between this limitation of God's for- 
giveness and that theory Avhich represents 
God^s forgiveness as measured by the vast- 
ness of the gift, /.r.. His Son. Yet, notwith- 
standing the greatness of the gift, Christ 
added to whatever force there is in this sen- 
tence the following words : *^ For if ye for- 
give men their trespasses, your heavenly 
Father will also forgive you ; but if ye for- 
give not men their trespasses, neither will 
your Father forgive your trespasses'' (14th 
and 15th V. of 6th ch. of St. M.). 

Contrast which with the i6th v. of the 3d 
ch. according to St. John : '' All that believe 
in him shall not perish, but have everlasting 
life." 



''AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES:' 1 59 

Forgive and ye shall be forgiven, in the 
one case. 

Believe and ye shall not perish, in the 
other. 

Here is a question : Is not God's capacity 
for forgiving greater than ours ? 

God is not subject to the same blindness 
concerning motive. 

He can not only see the overt act, but the 
motive which prompts. We see the offen» 
sive act, and apply an equally offensive mo- 
tive. 

Again, God can watch our varying moods, 
and He can by His spirit influence them. 

We cannot see our enemy's relentings ; his 
moods of tenderness. 

God's capacity is infinitely beyond ours. 
But He is the governor of a moral agent to 
whom He must apply a system of rational 
control. 

'* Forgive as we forgive." ** Believe in the 
Lord Jesus Christ." 

Before we can believe we must know who 
the Lord Jesus Christ is, and what the re- 
quirements of the system of pardon which 
through and by Him has been instituted. 



l6o THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

Therefore instruction must precede even 
the most limited faith. 

Many persons have desired to find for- 
giveness, but have asked for it in vain be- 
caase of a spirit of selfish unforgiveness. 

This is the method of Jesus upon which 
we may not improve. 

Those who refuse to forgive are resisting 
the strivings of the good Spirit of God. 

But there are a few more reflections perti- 
nent to this issue. 

1st. A life of action inspires the necessity 
of reflection upon us. Reflecting, we differ 
in our judgments. Such differences will 
occasion irritation and miOmentary offence. 
Each difference of each person thus creating 
division and strife would render co-operation 
in life impossible, were we implacable. For- 
giveness, therefore, among sentient beingS; — 
beings with thought and feeling — is compelled 
by the exigent demands of our commercial, 
social and spiritual interests. 

2d. Upon the principle of forgiveness the 
whole plan of God is built. 

3d. Unless we forgive we do not truly 
believe in Christ, who is forgiveness personi- 
fied. 



''AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES:' l6l 

4th. Who should have pride if God possess 
it not — He who is King of Kings — whose 
possessions are unlimited? We are certain 
that these petty principalities of pride which 
flaunt their prejudice in the face of God and 
demand entrance into His heart, will be 
blown as chaff with the breath of His con- 
tempt into consuming flame. 

The home of God is in the hearts of those 
who forgive, and that home shall not be 
broken and destroyed by those who lay 
their pride across its threshold. 

Lastly, it is for the voice of God's ministry 
to repeat in living tones the words — 

Believe, Forgive. 

Let us learn tlien that notwithstanding 
the great power of God — the wisdom of His 
which orders all things aright — the great 
living gift, which was driven from the earth 
with blood only to return to testify that 
above all things He was a living and not a 
dying gift — that after all our salvation is 
only through a faith which demonstrates its 
existence in forgiving. 

We are not only to forgive offences per- 
sonal to ourselves, but, as Christians, offences 
against Christ. 



1 62 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

We may not properly measure up in 
thought to the requirements of this theme 
of forgiveness. We do not adequately con- 
ceive the nature of transgression ; how then 
can we see the meaning of the life of Christ, 
■in its teaching, its wonder workings, its tri- 
umph over temptation and death? 

Many systems have been invented to keep 
the child from the father. All the way 
through from the time of Adam, who strove 
'because of his consciousness of sin to hide 
from God, men have striven to erect barriers 
•between the child and the father, so that 
God might be kept at a distance. But truly 
the Lord's prayer is thine — is mine. 
• Let us utter this prayer, '* Father, forgive 
•as we forgive — yea more, for thou art God." 



'LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION:' 1 63 




CHAPTER VIII. 

^AND LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION 
BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL." 

JNE acquainted with the restorative 
principles of our holy rehgion can- 
not, at first, reconcile with ease 
this clause of the Lord's Prayer 
with the view of God in his government 
through Christ, the whole effect of which is 
to lead men away from temptation. 

For one to employ this clause just as it 
stands in our King James' Version is ap- 
parently to give God, the just and merciful, 
the character of one who is in alliance with 
Satan. Yet the words are very natural on 
the lips of one who pleads before the throne 
of God. We must not put too much stress 
upon mere words. We must take their gen- 
eral bearing when united. These words, 
forming the full text, are simply a prayer to 
God as against temptation and deliverance 



164 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

from all evil, whether it be the direct product 
of the personal work of the devil or the 
effect of those laws of discord which lie back 
of all laws of harmonious relation. 

We are wont as Christians to look upon 
this life as a state of probation through which 
we are prepared by processes of trial for a 
home of happiness and holiness. We are 
apt to think of God as one who can temper 
the winds of adversity, avert the evil, and 
restrain the tempter. We are in the habit 
of thinking that he who is tried by afflictive 
dispensations to the severest extent, that 
he who is tempted most, is to be — if he sus- 
tain such with fortitude and stand fast in 
the faith — elevated to the highest seat in 
the kingdom of God. 

Yet, nevertheless, no man is to seek ad- 
versity or temptation or evil in any form : he 
is to use this prayer constantly, '' Lead me 
not into temptation and deliver me from 
evil.'^ 

God does not tempt, he does not destroy 
the good. We must not say yea, we must 
not even think that God tempts us ; for the 
blessed apostle St. James has written: ''Let 



''LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATIONr 16$ 

no man say when he is tempted, I am tempt- 
ed of God, for God cannot be tempted with 
evil, neither tempteth he any man." 

Says St. James in another place : 

*^ Every good gift and every perfect gift is 
from above ; and cometh down from the 
Father of Lights, with whom is no variable- 
ness neither shadow of turning.'* 

Again: ** Every man is tempted when he 
IS drawn away of his own lusts and enticed." 

How sublime is this prayer as thus em- 
phasized : Lead us, Our Father in heaven, 
and then in order to say where, we say but 
** not into temptation.'' Where then do we 
ask to be led ? Why, to those quiet retreats 
where temptation rufifles not the serenity 
of the soul. This in this sense employed 
becomes a prayer for sanctification. It is 
really a prayer thus to be phrased : Lead me 
through all temptation to that place where 
thou art, for only with thee in thy heavenly- 
home is there perfect immunity from every 
ill. 

It is to say : *' Lead, kindly light, amid the 
encircHng gloom, lead thou me on." 

Lead me to that condition of spirit in 



1 66 THE LORD'S PR A YER. 

which obedience becomes easy — a condi- 
tion to which very few of us have attained* 
Even so good a man as St. Paul was, had 
not the feeling that he had attained so high 
a condition of spirit. He did not consider 
that he had apprehended. If we had at- 
tained that position where temptation could 
not affect us, then it would be superfluous 
for us to pray. Lead us not into tempta- 
tion. 

Temptation is a watchful foe. He meets 
us at every turn. Are we obedient to the 
lower laws of our being? then we are tempt- 
ed on the higher planes of our being into 
pride. 

What wonder that there are any who do 
good. And yet if there are any who enter- 
tain nothing that is evil, can we by search- 
ing find them out? 

With evil in our hearts certainly we can 
find no one of whom we can say, as Christ 
-did ofNathanael: ''Behold an Israelite in- 
deed, in whom is no guile." 

Possibly there are those to whom the 
Lord can impute no sin. Blessed indeed 
are such. 



''LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATIONS 1 6/ 

Temptation is a subtle thing. It is rather 
of the thought than the physical appetite. 
Until the imagination becomes active the 
physical nature may sleep. A person may 
think hours and days of some desirable ob- 
ject and yet be unconscious that the sin of 
covetousness is gaining a lodgment in his 
heart. And so unconsciously his strength. 
of purpose becomes weakened. 

Many indeed awake to find that they have 
unreflectingly been tempted into some in- 
dulgence hurtful to the purity of their 
natures. 

Temptation, however, to most persons is 
wholly objective, standing plainly before the 
eye of the body, appealing to the eye first. 
Yet following this outward manifestation 
there must be some thought, otherwise the 
mere sensual appeal would not tempt a per- 
son. 

We desire those things which are of estima- 
tion — such as money, valuable for what it 
will purchase ; beauty, for the admiration 
which it excites in others ; pleasure, for the de- 
lightful sensations which it may produce in 



i68f THE LORD'S PR A YER, 

ourselves. Now, if we become anxious to 
obtain money without gaining it as the reward 
of legitimate endeavor, we are in a state of 
temptation. If we possess money, and are 
anxious to gratify an unlawful desire, then 
such anxiety is a temptation to us. Money 
in itself is not a temptation. Beauty is, and 
so is pleasure. Money tempts because it 
has purchasing power. 

Two principles exist — good and evil. Good 
is the effect of a proper adaptation of a thing 
to its end. Good is the result of the right 
adaptation of means to ends. All being is 
because of some harmonious relation of 
parts. Being is possible only so long as the 
laws of its make-up are obeyed. 

For in all realms of God are so many, and 
only so many, possible combinations. They 
may be many million, yet they as to God*s 
perception must be limited. 

Out of a certain number of these God 
made the body of earth and rock; out of 
another certain number, water; out of 
another, air. Still in the vegetable world 



** LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION." 169 

and animal world we have other combina- 
tions. That which is evil in one depart- 
ment may be the highest good in another. 

God's higher law is presented to us, and 
we are commanded to obey it. And yet 
there is reason, not found alone in God's 
nature, but in our own, for these commands. 

What is evil is in many instances but the 
perversion of a law, or the abuse of a law 
which is good. 

For instance, pleasure is not of itself an 
evil thing, yet if we pursue it too far it may 
weaken the nerves and make us but creatures 
of impulse, or destroy altogether their ca- 
pacity for carrying sensations. 

The temperate use of a muscle is required 
of us. But the intemperate use of it is an 
evil. Yet men are tempted to overstrain 
themselves. 

Or take those Commandments Ten — al- 
though evil is wider than a disobedience of 
these. The moral commands taught by ex- 
perience cover the most minute regulations 
of our minds and bodies in themselves, as well 



I/O THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

as these which refer so especially to God 
and our neighbor. These Commandments 
are given to restrain the unlawful use of per- 
fectly lawful things. The accumulation of 
property is perfectly right, yet the accumu- 
lation of property at the expense of another, 
or to the overthrow of the fortunes of one 
or many, is forbidden. 

When we use this prayer we pray for 
clearness to perceive the right thing to do in 
every case, and the will to do just that 
thing. 

We are constantly tempted to do some 
other thing than the thing perceived. We 
are wise in thought, but unwise in execu- 
tion. 

We are led astray by both the imagina. 
tion and mere physical impulse. 

Again, we, in the Lord*s Prayer, also pray 
for deliverance from evil or the Evil One. 
Yet between evil and the Evil One there may 
be a great chasm dividing. This personal 
enemy may be perfectly passive, and yet 
many things which we esteem evil will hap-r 
pen, for they are only relatively evil. Not 



''LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATIONS I/I 

evil in and of themselves, but considered 
evil to us. For that which is an evil in one 
case is a blessing in another. Are we tempted 
to bear false witness against a neighbor? 
If we resist we are really better and stronger 
for the temptation. We consider the death 
of a parent an evil, and yet we, because of 
such death, are compelled to rely upon our- 
selves and rise to a higher manhood and 
womanhood. 

Apparent misfortune so quickens the en- 
ergies and arouses the will as to put a person 
at once on the road to highest success. 

We are to pray, '* Lead me not into temp- 
tation and deliver me from evil," yet the 
very secret of our alertness is because there 
is a tempting devil and the Evil One to 
meet. 

It is the fear of winter's cold that induces 
us to work for fuel and clothing during the 
warm summer months. It is the dread of 
starvation that keeps us so busy. It is the 
dread of what may happen after death that 
induces us to serve God. It is the effect of 
sin that urges us to be on the alert against 



172 THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

the wily tempter and to pray, **Lead us not 
into temptation but deliver us from evil/' 

In conclusion, let me say that after giving 
His disciples this model prayer Jesus Christ 
went on His path of purpose to make it possi- 
ble for men to be guided aright. He, by doing 
so, showed us the way of life. He Himself 
being tempted in all points like we, yet re- 
sisted ; He, overwhelmed by poverty, perse- 
cution, death, triumphed over all these. He 
went up into the sealed heavens, leaving us 
the record of His stainless life, sending back 
to us the spirit which should guide us into 
all truth. 

Thus guided we may resist temptation, 
and, though overwhelmed of material evil, 
rise to all spiritual victory. Lastly, a thought 
on the closing words of the prayer. 

** For thine is the kingdom and the power 
and the glory forever and ever." This is 
a form of doxology which was in common 
use among the Jews, and not attached to 
many of their prayers. 

This doxology shows however, the faith 
of the one who makes the prayer, for it af- 



''LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION:' 1/3 

firms that for which he prays when he says^ 
** Thine is the kingdom, thine the power 
and thine the glory/' 

The faith of the Church of God is in these 
closing words, for as a nation looks for vic- 
torious conquest, so the Church of God mili- 
tant looks forward with feelings of certitude 
toward the ultimate triumph of God's power 
in the establishment of His kingdom with 
lustre and great pomp. 



THE END. 




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